


Let My Demons Lie

by TheGaySmurf



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: (not many - but a few), ...mostly, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, But also, Canon Compliant, Doc calls it the hoodoo voodoo, F/F, Post-Finale, Set after the finale, Witches, Wolves, a new adventure, and including a FEW things from the new season, and some eventual fluff, because I am not a complete monster, because I am the ruler of The Dark Place, but I'm still following all of the canon rules, canon adjacent, he might be right, now that Season 2 has aired, plenty of angst, so I guess we'll call this, some heroics, that still follows the canon rules, this has become
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-10-08 05:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10379526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGaySmurf/pseuds/TheGaySmurf
Summary: In their darkest of hours, Nicole and Wynonna make a last ditch effort to save the woman they both love.  But there are strange forces at work, and many things are far more than what they seem.  When a new threat comes to town, will the BBD find the power to overcome it before it's too late?





	1. Hungry Like the Wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isawet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isawet/gifts).



> So... @sunspill (Isawet on AO3) gave me the prompt: Nicole finds a puppy while she's out on patrol and begs Waverly to let her keep it. I'm pretty sure she thought it was going to be a fluffy puppy story. This... is not that. At all. Not even a little bit. It... completely spiraled out of control and turned into a full-blown fic. But. I hope you still enjoy it.
> 
> Thanks go out to: 
> 
> \- @tinyvariations for helping me work through the plot knots and letting me talk things out. (Even if she DOES constantly tease me about my research...)
> 
> \- @piratekane (gilligankane on AO3) for volunteering to be a real, actual beta. The blood contract is in the mail.
> 
> \- @youreagoodliar (Half on AO3), @skillzyo, and @sunspill (Isawet) for checking things over and kicking my ass at 0300 when I'm whiny and have trouble writing. 
> 
> All mistakes are my own.
> 
>  
> 
> Fic title is taken from "Wild Horses" by Bishop Briggs  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: "Hungry Like the Wolf" - Duran Duran
> 
> PoV: Nicole
> 
>  
> 
> I'm sorry this first chapter is a few days late for you birthday, Gun Gun. But this is for you. Happy Birthday, Smol Snek!

 

The _first_ thing Nicole notices when she drags the heavy door open is the irony.

On the surface, everything still looks the same. 

The strange metal sculptures scattered across the front of the property, wearing skulls and chains as accessories, like some kind of twisted scarecrows raised from the Earth’s core to stand watch against far worse than scavenger birds.

The cluttered barn like something out of a horror movie, hammers and tongs and pokers pinned to the wall, tools of a trade that could just as easily belong to a twisted psychopath as an innocent smith.  Sharp implements dangle from the rafters like teeth ready to sink into the next unfortunate soul that wanders into waiting jaws.

The mighty forge, impressive in its stature, demanding respect as the bellows and the swage block and the anvil all pay tribute to its hearth, where it forces even the most stubborn of metals into submission, bowing to its will so that it may shape them into its desired image.

On the surface, everything still looks the same.

But it’s not.

The rusted sentries failed to protect and the forge has lost its fire and the once warm barn now stands cold and empty inside.

The irony hits Nicole again like a bucket of icy water and she shudders, wrapping her parka tighter against the chill that has nothing to do with the frosty wind whipping through the open door at her back, rattling the iron cattle brands that sway overhead.

“The teeth are chattering,” she says to no one and scoffs out a humorless laugh, trying desperately to focus on anything but the fact that her _kind of_ girlfriend is waiting for her back at the Homestead.

She also looks the same on the surface.

She also stands cold and empty inside.

Well, not exactly _empty_.

Nicole can’t let herself think about _that_ , so she focuses instead on the reason why she’s here.  Mattie might be gone, but there’s a chance there could be something of hers hidden among the generators and the blacksmithing tools and the discarded scraps of metal that could help Waverly.  It’s grasping at straws and they know it, but Nicole couldn’t just _sit there_ any longer, listening to that _thing_ continue to expose their deepest fears and insecurities using Waverly’s honeyed voice. 

Doc is still off trying to spring Dolls from the mobile command unit where Lucado has him detained just outside of town, and Wynonna is refusing to leave Waverly’s side, even though she’s taking the worst of vitriol that is spewing out of her mouth.  So, when she had suggested that they make a trip out here as a last ditch effort, Nicole had jumped at the chance to try and clear her head.

It’s not working.

The _second_ thing Nicole notices when she takes a few steps farther into the barn is the smell.

She recognizes it immediately, bile rising in her throat as her stomach rebels against the stench.  The last time she had been overwhelmed by the sharp odor of rot, her nose stinging while her eyes burned, had been at the academy during their field trip to the body farm.  There’s no mistaking that smell, and she can already feel the adrenaline setting her veins on fire.

With a practiced ease, Nicole clicks on her Maglite mini and draws her sidearm, grateful that she hasn’t been without it since all of this started a few days ago.  It doesn’t take her long to locate a row of switches on the far wall, and she finds that, luckily, the power is still on.  The large lights wired to the rafters must be hooked to one of the generators lining the other wall, but a string of small bulbs stapled above the two doorways on this side hum to life and bathe everything in a soft, incandescent glow.

The smell is much stronger over here and Nicole cautiously swings her flashlight into the first side room, the beam reaching farther than the arc of light spilling in through the doorway.  It’s a small bathroom with a simple tile floor and a deep basin for a sink, with a spigot rather than a normal tap.  She can see a rubber hose coiled nearby, and it’s clear that this facility was designed with easy cleanup in mind.  There’s a shower/bath combo on the other side of the toilet with a cheap plastic curtain blocking her view of the inside.

Nicole takes a deep breath to prepare herself before entering and immediately regrets it, coughing and gagging from the decomposition that hangs heavy in the air.  Once she’s steadied herself again, she moves slowly to the curtain and, with her jaw tight, yanks it back while raising her weapon, all in one fluid motion.

She blinks rapidly as she takes it all in. 

Shampoo.  Conditioner.  A washcloth draped next to a bar of soap.  A couple of bottles of scented shower gel.

No blood.  No body parts.  No putrid goo pooled in the bottom of the tub from a long-forgotten corpse.

Nicole had been certain she was going to find an unpleasant surprise waiting for her, but instead she’s left needing to search elsewhere.  As she approaches the other room, she finds a second switch on the wall, just outside the door.  When she flips it, several things happen at once.

A large lamp flickers on next to an old brass bed and Nicole squints against the sudden brightness before noticing two large, yellow eyes staring back at her. 

 _"H_ _oly shit!”_ she yells unceremoniously as she stumbles backwards, tripping over a small metal pail sitting next to a workbench behind her.  She tumbles to the ground, falling on her ass, and feels something tickling at her hand.

When she looks down and catches a glimpse of red, her first assumption is that she’s bleeding.  But when she raises her hand to examine it, the silky red strands slip through her fingers and flutter to the ground.

It’s not blood.

It’s hair.

 _Her_ hair.

 _“Seriously?”_  Nicole blurts out, her voice laced with disbelief and bordering on panic. 

One hand still grips her gun so tightly her knuckles are turning white and she can feel the ridged grip digging into her palm, grating against the callouses that normally protect her from it.  She raises her other hand to her head and runs her fingers through her hair, gasping when she reaches the place where a large section of it stops abruptly at her collar, several inches shorter than the rest.

Looking around, she notices several thin strips of metal leaned against the leg of the workbench, just inches from where she landed.  They appear to be lawnmower blades, and judging by the shiny sliver visible along the edges, standing in stark contrast to the rest of the grimy metal, they’ve already been sharpened.

Nicole gulps when she realizes she could have been in a lot worse condition than just having a large portion of her hair sliced off.

Taking a shaky breath, Nicole starts to push herself to her feet.  But then she remembers what had made her falter in the first place, and her attention snaps back to the bed pushed against the far wall of the bedroom through the open doorway.

The yellow eyes are still regarding her, haunted and unblinking.

Now that she’s taking a chance to really survey the scene, Nicole has to do a double take.  Curled up in the center of the bed, its massive head resting on its gigantic paws, is an enormous dog, its eyes never once leaving Nicole.  It seems to have pawed at the pillows and the quilt until it managed to create a makeshift nest, and it remains hunkered down within it, even as Nicole begins to approach cautiously.

The moment she steps into the room, Nicole discovers the source of the smell.  Laid out in front of the bed, in a suspiciously straight line, is a row of small animals – squirrels and rabbits and even a few pheasants and quail.  Their necks are broken and they are on display, almost as though they have been presented as offerings.  It’s obvious that a few of them have been here for quite some time, all of them showing various states of decomposition.  A couple of the fresher gifts are partially eaten, and Nicole wonders how desperate the dog must have gotten the longer its apparent master remained absent.

“Hey, buddy…” Nicole says quietly, taking a hesitant step forward.  There’s a low rumble in the animal’s chest, but it makes no effort to react physically to her movement.  She inches forward and it allows her to approach the bed with her free hand stretched out, palm up to show she’s not a threat. 

It raises its head when she’s within reach, and she freezes, waiting to see what it will do.  After a long moment of watching each other, it drops its head back to its paws with a soft huff, and Nicole thinks it sounds _sad_.  She’s holding her breath, partially because of the smell and partially because she’s pretty sure this thing could take her hand off without a second thought, when she pushes forward the last little bit to close the gap.

She’s expecting it to be thick and coarse and scratchy when she threads her fingers through the fur behind its ears, watching as they quiver and flick and pivot toward her at the gentle touch.  She’s surprised when her palm glides easily over a soft, smooth, silky coat.  Carefully setting her gun next to her on the bed, she brings her other hand up to scratch behind its other ear and she can’t help the sympathetic smile that forms when it subtly leans its head into the affection.

“You must be hungry, buddy…” Nicole says and it raises up to nudge against her hands with its impressive muzzle.  She eyes the partially eaten animals, trying to ignore the smell that’s clinging to her skin and forcing its way into her nostrils, causing her eyes to water.  “Give me a minute, okay?  I think I have something in my car.” 

She shakes her head at herself when she realizes she’s talking to a dog like she would a person, but she doesn’t miss the way it tilts its head, as though it can understand her perfectly.

  

* * *

 

“I know it’s around here somewhere…”

After digging around in the center console of her squad car for a few minutes and then moving to the glove compartment, Nicole finally finds what she’s looking for.  She tries not to think about how, despite the fact that she’s sitting here in the middle of a dead woman’s property because her _kind of_ girlfriend is being used like a puppet on a string, the thing that is apparently the most important to her at this moment in time is locating a half-eaten bag of beef jerky that’s been in her vehicle for longer than she can remember.

Welcome to your new life.

As an afterthought, she rummages through the duffle bag in her trunk, pulling out her scarf and wrapping it around her nose and mouth to help combat the terrible smell she’s about to walk back into.  She forces herself not to remember the last time she’d worn it, when Waverly had dragged her down for a quick kiss and then scurried out of the station before anyone could catch them.

Nicole isn’t sure what to expect when she’s settled back on the bed next to the dog.  It hasn’t moved an inch from where it’s nestled into the pile of bedding, but its eyes are watching her closely and it licks its chops when she reaches into the bag and pulls out a few strips of dried meat.  She’s almost afraid to try and feed it and wonders if maybe just dumping the jerky out on the bed and standing back might be the safest idea.

But while she contemplates, the dog makes up her mind for her, craning its neck forward and snatching the jerky away from her with a surprising amount of restraint.  It is apparently accustomed to eating from someone’s hand, and knows how to do so without taking a few fingers with it.

“Thank god for that,” Nicole mumbles, her voice breaking the silence, causing it to cock its head at her.  “Sorry, buddy.  Just talking to myself,” she sighs out and scratches its ears briefly before pulling out a few more strips of meat.  She keeps her hand flat this time, letting the jerky rest across her open palm.  The dog takes it from her carefully again, its nose and tongue tickling against her skin.

They repeat the process until it has finished off what was left in the bag, its tail occasionally thumping against the mattress when Nicole pets its head while it eats.  She rubs her hands on her jeans after stuffing the empty bag in the pocket of her parka and laughs when it sniffs at them, licking the salty residue off of her fingers.

“That’s all I’ve got for now.  You’ll have to come with me if you want more,” she says and rubs under its chin.  A thought occurs to her, and she shifts on the bed to get a better angle.  “Are you a…” she trails off as she drags her fingers down its ribs, scratching through the soft fur as she goes.  As she predicted, it flops over on its side, giving her more access.  “…a boy,” she finishes when its underbelly is exposed.  “Such a good boy.”

Nicole stands after a couple of minutes, careful to avoid the row of offerings he brought to his missing master and tries patting her leg to see if he’ll come to her.  He rolls back upright but makes no move to get off the bed.

“Come on, buddy,” she calls, patting both of her thighs this time.

He lets out a soft whine and nuzzles his face back into the pillow under his paws.  Nicole feels like someone is squeezing her heart.  She climbs back onto the bed and strokes along his head gently.

“Whatsa matter, boy?” she asks, her throat tight.

Another whine, this time longer and louder, and his tail thumps again.

“I know you miss her, buddy,” she says, her voice cracking.  “But she’s not coming back.”

The words she’s been fighting, refusing to say, claw their way out of her throat, leaving it raw as they scrape their way past her tongue. 

Something inside Nicole breaks when she says the words aloud, and all of the fear that’s been dammed up for the past week comes flooding through, the harsh current dragging her under. 

 _I miss her, but she’s not coming back_.

She throws her arms around the giant dog beside her and slumps forward, burying her face in his neck, and with sobs that wrack her entire body, Nicole cries for the first time since getting shot.

 _She’s not coming back_.

  

* * *

 

“What a waste of time,” Nicole grumbles, absentmindedly running her fingers through the portion of her hair cut away by the lawnmower blade. 

Just one more thing she’s lost. 

Another piece. 

Attacked by a serial killer that turned out to be more than one kind of demon, and everyone had ignored her when she’d tried to explain what happened.  She lost the trust she held in herself.  A piece of her sanity.  Outed by her girlfriend’s ex in front of the entire town, including her boss.  She lost the free will to make that revelation on her own terms.  A piece of her privacy.  Shot by her girlfriend’s sister, for no other reason than pure spite.  She lost her belief that you can always find the good in someone if you look hard enough.  A piece of her innocence.  Her girlfriend is currently possessed by some _thing_ , her normally bright eyes dull and lifeless as she spits hatred at anyone that gets close enough to listen.  She lost her faith that good always wins, no matter what.  A piece of her heart.

She wonders how many more pieces she’ll lose before she can’t even recognize herself anymore.

“There’s nothing here.” 

With a sigh of resignation, Nicole sinks down on the bed next to the dog again, scratching his ears.  She’s spent the past hour turning this place upside looking for something that might help Waverly.  A spellbook.  A sacred vessel.  A fucking voodoo doll.  Hell, with the world she’s just been thrown into, at this point, Nicole would only be half surprised if she found a goddamn magic wand.

She’s looked everywhere.  Beneath the floorboards under the bed.  Behind the tiles of the bathroom wall.  Up in the rafters, among the piles of tools, in with the recipes filed away in the small kitchen area tucked away in one corner of the main barn area.  She even dug through the ashes of the forge and the coal tray beneath it in case Mattie had stashed something in a fireproof container where no one would normally look.

But the only thing Nicole found was a cigar box tucked between the mattress and the bedframe, filled with a few of Mattie’s personal keepsakes.  A photograph of a little girl on her daddy’s knee, kissed by the passage of time, cracked and yellowed and worn.   Dried sage and sweet grass pressed between folded pieces of parchment, odd symbols scrawled in faded ink.  An amulet, thick leather cord adorned with a polished crystal swirled with color, a sunrise set against a sterling silver pendant.

“None of this _junk_ is going to save Waverly,” she seethes and hurls the cigar box across the room in frustration.  It hits the wall, the contents scattering around the small space like the final shards of hope Nicole had been desperately clinging to.

For the first time since discovering him, the enormous dog beside her snarls, hackles raised and lips curling up to reveal prominent fangs.  Nicole jerks away, startled, and then slumps forward, her shoulders sagging.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” she mumbles.  “You’re right.  It’s not junk.  It belonged to _her_.”

He continues to growl, the deep vibrations in his chest causing the entire bed to quiver, and Nicole slips down to the floor, resting on her knees as she begins to gather up the last remaining pieces of Mattie’s life.  The growling fades to a soft whine, and when she picks up the amulet, brushing her thumb over the smooth crystal in the middle, he nuzzles at her shoulder.

“It’s gonna be alright,” she whispers, threading her fingers through the soft, silver fur of his head.

She doesn’t believe a word of it.

  

* * *

 

“Wha— No, stop!  What are y—  Just…  _Why?”_

Nicole sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose.  It had been an ordeal, but she had finally coaxed Mattie’s dog off the bed out of the barn.  When he lumbered off the bed stood next to her, Nicole was stunned.  She had known he was huge just from seeing how much of the bed he had taken up, but when he pulled himself to his full height, his back was every bit as high as her waist and his head rested easily against her elbow.

The only way he had agreed to follow her out was if she brought along the quilt he had been nesting in.  His enormous form padded through the barn with a surprising silence, his silvery coat taking on an ethereal appearance as it caught the last rays of the setting sun through the open door.  I was like watching some sort of spirit floating along, an apparition haunting its domain one final time before giving up the ghost.

She had just finished spreading the quilt over her backseat when Nicole turned around to find her companion digging a giant hole, snow and dirt and shale flying up in all directions.  She wipes at a smattering of mud that just splattered across her face.  His entire front half is wet and icy and covered in mud.  She inches closer and he pauses, sitting back on his haunches, looking incredibly proud of himself.

“Was this entirely necessary?”

The bark he gives in response is so loud, Nicole visibly jumps.

“Hey,” she scolds.  “Not nice.”

He barks again, pawing once more at the edge of his hole.  She crouches down to see what he is so adamant about, and immediately leaps back, throwing her arms out behind her to keep from falling in the slush.  The cold numbs her fingers like the shock numbs the rest of her body and it takes getting licked in the face to snap her out of it.

Nicole clambers to her feet awkwardly and fishes her gloves out of her pockets while she tries to get her breathing back under control.  After flexing her fingers a few times, she jams them into the fur-lined leather and slowly leans forward to inspect the hole again.  Wynonna had warned her about the “security system” Mattie employed, but seeing the black plastic casing jutting out of the snow in person was still enough to make it difficult to swallow.

“She told me they were inactive.”  Her voice is strained and at least an octave higher than normal.  “But did you really have to go tempting fate?”

The dog barks again, his broad tail sweeping the soft ground behind him.  Shoving his muzzle back into the hole, he begins to dig again.

“Okay, stop!  Will you _stop?”_   Nicole throws her arm up to protect her face from another hail of debris.  _“Please?”_ she begs.

She hears a muffled _woof_ coming from the hole and then he sits back again, tossing his head about, his front paws practically dancing in the mud.

“What’s that, Lassie?  Timmy fell down the well?” she asks sarcastically, snorting even as she says it.  He cocks his head at her and she throws her hands up.  “Alright, alright.  I was kidding, okay?”  She crouches down again and peers into the hole once more.

That’s when she sees it.

“What the…”

Reaching a gloved hand into the hole, she brushes some of the dirt aside and hears a crinkling noise just beneath the surface.  Using both hands now, she unearths a package wrapped in Tyvek and drags it out of the hole.  The dog barks next to her again, but she’s oblivious to it this time.  Wiping the bundle off as best as she can, she pulls off her gloves and works her fingers up under the edges of the wrapping.  When she finally loosens it enough, she manages to slide the contents free, landing in her lap with a _thump_.

A book.

A _large_ book.  Bound in leather, strange runes burned into the surface, delicate feathers dangling from the binding.

“She buried it under the land mine…” Nicole whispers as she runs a shaky finger along the spine.  She tilts it open, carefully leafing through the pages filled with sketches of sigils and notes scribbled in the margins and more of the strange symbols from the folded parchments in the cigar box currently sitting in her front seat.

“She buried under the land mine!” she shouts again, boisterous and exuberant and giddy.  She lunges forward and wraps her arms around her new friend for a second time, ignoring the fact that his muddy mess is rubbing off all over her face and coat, this time sharing in her joy as she hugs him tightly and coos in his ear. 

“Who’s a good boy…  Such a good boy!”

Nicole gets the quilt moved to the front seat where it will be safe from the dog’s filthy paws, and grabs the emergency blanket from out of the trunk, spreading it across the backseat instead.  It takes some doing, but she eventually gets him loaded up and then settles herself behind the wheel, her hand coming to rest protectively on the book in the passenger seat beside her.

None of the things Nicole saw in the pages made a damn bit of sense to her, and she has no fucking clue how they might use it to help Waverly, but something about finding it the way they did seems to resurrect the faint hope that had shattered when she’d thrown the box across the room earlier.  The sun has finally dipped below the mountain, and she wonders what she’s going to find when she returns to the Homestead.   
  
Will Wynonna even notice how long she’s been gone? 

Depends on how many of the whiskey bottles stashed around the house have been drained.

She hears the massive animal shifting in her backseat and she looks in the rearview mirror, realizing he takes up far more of the space on the other side of the Plexiglas partition than any of the mopes she’s ever arrested have.

“Just…  you know…” Nicole waves her hand at him awkwardly as she glances over her shoulder.  “Try not to like…  eat my door handle or anything.”

She can’t be sure, but she thinks she catches a hint of indignation in the huff she gets in return.

The intelligence that glints in his eyes can be a bit unnerving at times, and she wonders just exactly how much he actually understands.

But she doesn’t have time to worry about that right now.

The people she cares about are waiting for her.

She hopes it’s not too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry. I am still working on Haught's History -- aka I'm Ready (When You're Ready for Me). This is just a little detour on the side. I can't promise a posting schedule for either, because I intend to work on both. But I promise I'm not giving up on either of them.


	2. Howling at the Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: "Howling at the Moon" - Milow
> 
> PoV: Wynonna

 

_"You’re as bad as he was.”_

Wynonna squeezes her eyes shut and drops her head back against the wall of the barn harder than she means to.  Her teeth clack together with the impact and the rough, splintered wooden plank bites into her scalp.

It still has less bite than the words, sinking their jagged teeth in, ripping and tearing at her heart.

_“Worse, actually.  Because you know better.”_

The truth of it scorches, the flames licking at her chest, leaving her exposed and blistered and raw.

It doesn’t stop her from taking a long pull of the whiskey in her hands, though.  The words of the _thing_ that used to be her sister have been searing into her mind, body, and soul for the past several days.  She figures if she lets the potent liquor burn all the way down, lets it smolder in her belly, maybe it will somehow balance out.

Daddy always did say they should fight fire with fire.

_“Look at you.  You’re just like him.”_

Her fist clenches, her fingers wrapping around the neck of the bottle, and Wynonna is almost certain she can feel her own throat tightening in response.  It takes a few seconds for her to gasp out a breath, her lungs screaming, just like the demons in her head. 

Like the demons in her _sister’s_ head.

The resulting laughter at her choking echoes in Wynonna’s ears.  It used to be one of her favorite sounds when they were kids, but now it is as dull and flat and cold as the straw-covered floor of the barn that’s numbing her ass.  It seeps through the cracks in the barriers she so carefully built around herself just like the icy wind slips through the holes in the wall at her back, both of them cutting so deeply they leave nicks in her bones.

Their first instinct when Wynonna and Doc managed to wrestle a struggling Waverly back home – after disarming her, Doc had fashioned a makeshift hobble out of his and Wynonna’s belts and ridden in the bed of the truck with his knee pressed firmly between her shoulder blades – had been Nicole’s handcuffs.  A frantic call from Wynonna had dragged her bruised and broken body out of bed, terror clawing at her injured ribs from the inside out while she rushed to meet them at the Homestead.

The cuffs hadn’t lasted long.

The restraints had immediately produced a string of filthy suggestions that had first caused the blood to rush into Nicole’s face, but then the embarrassment had quickly faded into disgust at the idea of that _thing_ defiling Waverly’s body, leaving her retching bile and chicken soup and the remains of lime Jell-O from the hospital into the snow outside the barn.

And while the handcuffs _did_ manage to keep her – _It_ – from lashing out, from lifting them off the ground by their throats as if they were no more than a mere child’s plaything, _It_ had quickly taken to forcing Waverly’s body to thrash against them, ripping the delicate skin around her wrists and leaving angry bruises where the unforgiving metal bit into the soft flesh.

When Doc had suggested ropes and a chair, Nicole and Wynonna had been inclined to agree.  They needed to protect themselves. 

But they also needed to protect _her_.

Wynonna had dragged a chair through the snow and, between Nicole’s time on her family’s ranch and Doc’s time in the literal old west, they’d managed to tie sufficient enough knots to hold her in place.  She – _It_ – had mocked their use of a kitchen chair to contain a demon.  But chairs standing empty around a dinner table, something that was _supposed_ to be an iconic symbol of family, had only ever served to remind them of what they had lost.  Wynonna hoped that maybe if using one now somehow helped them save her sister, it might start to remind them instead of what they had _found_.

The chair hadn’t lasted much longer than the handcuffs.

She had been tied to it well enough.  But the sheer strength of the _thing_ inside her had managed to push up far enough to slam back down into the barn floor with the amount of force needed to splinter the wood, sending pieces of it flying and setting her free in the process.

She had nearly escaped.

If it hadn’t been for some quick lasso work by Doc, they would all be in a very different situation right now.  He had jerked her back, dragging her closer, and managed to hogtie her before she could snap his neck.

Regardless of the quick thinking and necessity of what he’d done, it had still earned him a punch to the jaw from Nicole.  The scrapper in him had wanted to fight back, but he could see the look in her eyes.  Fear.  Anger.  _Desperation_.  When Wynonna had stepped between them, he’d allowed her to push him away and he’d watched as she had shoved her bottle of whiskey into Nicole’s hands with a few harsh words, all while Waverly – _It_ – had spouted atrocities from where she was still squirming at Doc’s feet, leaving all of them laid open and exposed.

Something had to give.

They were getting nowhere with the research on how to save Waverly.  Hell, they were struggling to even keep her restrained.  If only Dolls had been there.  He would have known what to do.

 _Dolls_.

Wynonna had suddenly gotten an idea. 

Nicole had _hated_ it. 

But they hadn’t really had much of a choice.

After explaining how she had seen Dolls rig Whiskey Jim up in the warehouse, Doc and Nicole had found themselves straddling the rafters, lashing ropes to the thick beams while Wynonna tied the body of her sister – hands, arms, legs, feet, torso…  she wasn’t taking any chances this time – to another kitchen chair.  She – _It_ – had taunted them for repeating their mistakes, but once Wynonna had tipped the chair back, keeping Waverly’s feet off the floor, and secured it in place with the ropes pulling from all four corners of the barn, the laughter had died on Waverly’s tongue and the seething hatred had resumed.

It’s been two days since then, and the bonds are still holding.

They take the little victories where they can right now.

Wynonna finally opens her eyes again, blinking the sting away from them as she takes another swig from her bottle.  She looks up from where she’s shoved herself in the corner with her knees drawn up tightly against her chest, folded in on herself as though if she becomes a small enough target, maybe she’ll be safe from the barrage.

She wipes her chapped lips on the back of her hand, catching an errant trickle from the corner of her mouth.  She’s dehydrated and malnourished and her vision is blurry – these things tend to happen when you’ve consumed nothing but whiskey for four days straight – but she still manages to focus on the inky blackness that is using Waverly to stare at her.

She looks so small, bound to the chair and suspended from the rafters.  Every bit the little girl left out in the cold by their father and constantly at the mercy of their older sister’s sadistic whims. 

Tiny and vulnerable and helpless.

She – _It_ – is _none_ of those things.

_“At least he never shot anyone.  You’ve killed forty percent of your own family.  How does that feel?”_

Wynonna wants to scoff.  To wave it off as an exaggerated accusation born out of desperation to win this infernal game.  But the truth of it slices through her denial with surgical precision and leaves her bleeding regret and guilt and shame all over her bloodstained hands.

_“And killing Shorty?  A sweet, innocent man that never did anything but love and care for Gus and your sister?”_

She can hear his pleas, drowned out by the echoes of Sam bragging about all of the things he intends to use the new body for.  His face still haunts her dreams every night, another in a mural of innocent lives she’s destroyed, painted on the backs of her eyelids.  It’s all she sees every time she closes her eyes.

Her failures.

Waverly’s lips curl up in a twisted smirk, foreign and out of place where a bright, innocent, encouraging smile usually sits.

_“That’s right, Wynonna.  You’re like a poison, weakening and withering everyone around you.  You ruin everything you touch.  She told you everyone hated you, and you turned it into a joke like you always do.  But I can see her mind.  Feel her heart.  She meant every word of it.”_

The words are razor sharp, a deadly blade slipping between her ribs and prying them apart as it pierces her lungs and steals her breath.  She reflexively takes another drink of whiskey, praying the burn will melt the icy fingers of blame wrapping around her throat again.

_“It’s the truth.  No wonder Peacemaker was searching for a better Heir.  You’re as cursed as your last name.”_

Wynonna feels the barrel of the gun digging into her thigh, the steel as cold and unrelenting as the declaration digging into her soul.  Hearing it spoken in Waverly’s voice transports her to a barren field with a paralyzing grip and a straight razor pushing into her neck, when she’d heard a similar confession forced under duress.  It hadn’t hurt nearly as badly as the follow-up accusation leveled in a rare moment of brutal honesty coaxed to the surface by the simple offer of alcohol, the sickening sugary sweet flavor a stark contrast to the bitterness behind the words.

 _“Why are you even here, Wynonna?  You said you came back for Waverly.  That you stayed for her.  But even_ she _can see that’s a lie.”_

She shifts on the floor of the barn, her muscles tightening like a rubber band stretched to its limit.  They aren’t supposed to engage.  They had learned that the hard way back in the beginning when she – _It_ – had first started dissecting them, peeling them back layer by painful layer.  But hearing Waverly’s name uttered through those darkened lips has something stirring uncomfortably inside Wynonna.

 _“You said you were here for_ her _, but you were so wrapped up in your own dysfunction that you missed the most important thing happening in her life.”_

Wynonna cringes at that, only realizing a few moments later that the aftertaste of smoky spice coating her tongue has soured with the sharp tang of copper after sinking her teeth into her cheek.

_“She tried to tell you several times.  But you don’t even know how to listen.  All you cared about was the reappearance of Willa.  Of going back to the way things were before.  The two of you thick as thieves and Waverly left behind.  Forgotten again by a family that still doesn’t want her.”_

Salt mixes with the copper, and Wynonna realizes the sting in her eyes is no longer from the whiskey alone.

“That’s not true,” she rasps, speaking for the first time, her voice thick and hoarse, clawing its way out of her throat.

_“Isn’t it, though?  The memory is quite vibrant.  I can see it plain as day.  She was in the barn that afternoon.  She heard both of you, and it only made her shrink further into herself.  A bullet tore through her flesh not long after, and for a brief moment, she wondered if it would have been better if she had died.  If she had just ceased to exist.”_

The rubber band pulls tighter, Wynonna’s knuckles turning white around the bottle in her hand.

_“Ohhhhhh…”_

Waverly’s delighted laughter rings through the barn, an unsettling effect in a horror film. 

_“It seems the moment wasn’t so brief.  She’s tried to fight it, but every now and then, her mind has returned to that thought.”_

The blackness swirling in Waverly’s eyes intensifies, spreading into her cheeks like oil seeping through sand.  When she – _It_ – speaks again, her voice is no longer her own, instead deep and layered and haunted with echoes.

_“Perhaps I should grant her wish.”_

The tension building in Wynonna’s resolve finally snaps.  She hurls the bottle of whiskey across the barn and it shatters against the door, pieces flying in all directions, an explosion of shrapnel.

Before the first shard of glass hits the floor, Wynonna is on her feet in front of the suspended body of her sister, Peacemaker drawn and leveled at Waverly’s forehead.

Wynonna fights the urge to tremble, forcing her hand to remain steady. 

It’s easier said than done. 

The gun in her hand is not reacting to being aimed directly at this _thing_.  No hidden runes making themselves known.  No fiery glow as it prepares to dispatch an enemy.  Not even the strange blue light that had appeared when she’d had to mercifully put Willa out of her misery.

Has it decided to abandon her again?

“If you hurt her, I swear to god I’ll—”

_“You’ll what?  Shoot this one like you shot the other one?”_

It throws Waverly’s head back, cackling into the rafters, an eerie, ethereal sound.

_“Be my guest.  I can easily find someone else to play with.  But she will be gone and you will add her blood to your hands.  I hope you see her face every time you look in the mirror.”_

“Leave.  Her.  _Alone,”_ Wynonna seethes through clenched teeth.  She can feel the bile rising in her throat, but she cocks the hammer just the same.

A loud _crack_ resonates through the barn.

For a terrifying moment, she’s afraid she actually pulled the trigger.

“Wynonna, what the _fuck?!”_

Her head jerks to the side and she sees Nicole’s silhouette framed in the doorway, the swinging door bouncing off the wall after the initial impact.

It takes her several more moments to realize she’s also staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Nicole…” she croaks, and reality finally burns through the haze of liquor and anger and instinct that had been clouding her sluggish mind, seeping into her weary limbs, numb with exposure and exertion and exhaustion. 

Wynonna looks down and startles when she realizes Peacemaker is inches from Waverly’s face, her finger on the trigger.  She – _It_ – bares her teeth and leans forward, closing the distance and pressing Waverly’s forehead roughly against the barrel of the gun.

_“Do it.”_

She – _It_ – taunts Wynonna, wicked glee dancing in the depths of the darkness where Waverly’s eyes should be.

The first thing that registers in Wynonna’s whiskey-addled brain is that nothing is happening.  Waverly’s skin is not hissing or burning or blistering from contact with the magically imbued weapon.  Her brow furrows while she tries to process this information.

The second thing she registers is the soft scraping of metal against metal, followed by a decisive click.  Turning her head slowly back toward Nicole, Wynonna sees that she has pulled back the hammer on her Nighthawk Classic, and it is currently aimed directly at her center mass.

Glancing back at Waverly, Wynonna sees the hint of a smirk flicker at the corner of her lips before it disappears just as quickly, melting into an innocent pout.

“Nicole…” Waverly whimpers, the otherworldly reverberation gone again. 

Wynonna watches as the inky nightmare dissipates, retreating somewhere within her sister.  It’s replaced by wide, hazel eyes, sunken and red and brimming with fresh tears.

“Nicole, I’m so scared.”  Waverly’s voice trembles slightly, her bottom lip quivering.  “Help me, baby.”  Her eyes flicker to Wynonna’s for a brief moment, a mischievous glint flashing before they slide back to Nicole in the doorway.  _“Please.”_

“Get away from her, Wynonna…” Nicole warns, her voice low and steady and unnerving. 

Wynonna narrows her eyes and swings Peacemaker away from her sister, rounding on her new target.  She – _It_ – is trying to take advantage of Nicole, and she can’t let that happen.  No matter what.

“It’s not her, Nicole.”  Adrenaline ignites the whiskey in her blood, pumping molten lava through her veins.  “I _promise_ you, it’s not her.  I can tell.”

Nicole scoffs and inches closer, her gun still leveled at Wynonna.  “As if _you_ are the person who would know.”

It’s a slap in the face, and Wynonna recoils as if Nicole had physically struck her.  She deserves it.  She knows she does.  _From both of them_.  But now is not the time.  There’s too much at risk.

“Put the gun down, Haught.”  Wynonna’s voice is louder.  Firmer.  Nicole is the only ally she has left at this point, and she can’t afford to get caught in a Mexican standoff with her right now.

“Not happening, Earp.”

Nicole is only a few feet away now, and she – _It_ – continues using Waverly’s voice to plead with her.

“You left me alone with her, and I was so afraid.”  She sniffles and sobs and cranes her neck toward Nicole.  “She was going to shoot me.”

“I’m here now, baby,” Nicole says, her voice infinitely softer than the edge it held for Wynonna.  “I won’t let that happen.”

“Haught, _please,”_ Wynonna begs, Peacemaker nearly touching Nicole’s chest now.  “You _have_ to know it’s not her.”

Nicole keeps her eyes and her gun on Wynonna, but reaches out with her left hand to brush away one of the tears streaming down Waverly’s cheek.  She turns her face into Nicole’s touch, and Nicole’s eyelids flutter momentarily at the show of affection.

Then they bulge and she yelps as she suddenly jerks her hand away and holds it palm up between herself and Wynonna.

Droplets of blood well up along the fleshy part of Nicole’s thumb, dark and angry against her pale skin.

“The fuck…” Wynonna mutters, and they both turn to look at Waverly together.

Her eyes are swirling black pools again, her face contorting into a hideous grin, teeth stained red and a rivulet of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

Nicole staggers backward and Wynonna lunges forward to steady her before she topples into the support beam.  Her gun clatters to the floor when her hands go to her knees to keep herself from swaying, her palm painting a crimson stain across the thigh of her jeans.  Wynonna quickly holsters Peacemaker and picks up the Nighthawk, releasing the hammer and reengaging the safety.

The haunting laughter is back, filling the spaces between their heartbeats with dread.

_“You make it so easy, there’s barely any fun left in it.”_

Ignoring the smugness saturating the voice of her sister, Wynonna keeps a hand on Nicole’s back while she struggles to breathe.

_“Following after this one like a little lost puppy.  So trusting and vulnerable.  It will just make it all the more entertaining when she finally rips the heart from your chest.”_

Nicole pushes herself upright again, shoving Wynonna’s hand away in the process and causing her to stumble back a step.  She watches as Nicole sets her jaw, her face pale but stubborn and determined and Wynonna thinks maybe a little bit desperate.

“Waverly would never do that,” she says through gritted teeth, and though her tone is low, Wynonna picks up on the hint of uncertainty.

_“No?  She’s only humoring you because you pushed her into this.  Poor, little Waverly.  Always trying to make everyone else happy and too afraid to stand up for herself.  And now she’s ended up in a relationship with a woman because she doesn’t know how to say no.”_

Nicole’s fists clench so tightly her fingers are digging into her palms.  A drop of blood oozes from the open wound on her left hand, runs down her curled thumb, and drips onto the straw beneath her boots.

“Haught…”  Wynonna tries gently, taking a step forward, but Nicole can’t tear her gaze away from the _thing_ that is supposed to be her _kind of_ girlfriend. 

She – _It_ – closes Waverly’s eyes and cocks her head to the side, as though searching for something.  When her eyes open again, still black and swirling, the smirk is accompanied by a hum of satisfaction.

_“Oh, but it seems she is quite the inquisitive one.  Finds herself backed into a corner, forced into a situation she didn’t ask for, but is still intrigued by it nonetheless.  Apparently even a trapped bird is inclined to experiment when the opportunity presents itself.  But where will you find yourself once her curiosity has run its course?”_

More blood drains from Nicole’s face, skin so pale now it looks ethereal.  A spirit framed with a halo of fire, shoulders trembling beneath the weight of both worlds they are carrying.

 _“She will_ destroy _you.  And toss you aside like the unwanted burden that you are.”_

“She won’t…”  Nicole whispers, barely audible above the wind whipping past the rickety walls of the barn, her eyes glistening with tears that spill over, streaking down her muddy cheeks and joining the drops of blood on the floor at her feet.

 _“She crushed Champ Hardy’s heart with her bare hands, and that’s a man she has cared about for_ years _.  What makes you think you won’t fall victim to the same treatment?”_

Wynonna doesn’t know much about this rookie cop that has somehow gotten herself dragged right into the heart of the Earp Curse and everything else that Purgatory sees fit to throw at them.  She had been shocked to learn that Nicole had turned out to be a rock, steady and strong and unwavering, for Waverly when she had needed it most.

But even monoliths are subject to erosion, and Wynonna can see the cracks and crevices spider-webbing out from the stress fracture in Nicole’s chest, splintering further with each word she – _It_ – wedges in the fissures. 

There was a reason Wynonna kept sending Nicole out with other tasks while she stayed behind to demon-sit.  The words she – _It_ – had assailed her with had cut to the bone.  But they were also not _new_.  Wynonna had been living with the guilt of her failures since she was twelve years old.  She had faced them in the mirror every day, whether she was in Purgatory or Greece or the goddamn mental institution. 

They lingered and leered and laughed at her from the other side of the glass, always just out of reach, but never out of mind.

After fifteen years, Wynonna had built up a tolerance to the venom.  And while she had eventually fallen to it, snapping and lashing out at the one taunting her, it had taken an entire onslaught to break her.

But with a single, well-placed blow, she – _It_ – has brought Nicole to her knees.

Literally.

Wynonna throws her arms out to grab Nicole as her legs give out, barely catching her before she hits the ground.  Her muscles are contracting and relaxing in rapid succession, and for a moment, Wynonna is afraid Nicole is going into convulsions.

But she’s consumed enough alcohol in her life to recognize what’s coming next.

“Alright, Haught.  Let’s get you outside.”  She supports Nicole the best she can as she frantically drags her toward the door, her lanky limbs and the fact that she has at least three inches on Wynonna making the attempt awkward and clumsy.

_“Awwww…  Look at the kicked puppy…  Don’t you want to stay and play a little longer?”_

Wynonna doesn’t bother to answer, but the last thing she sees over her shoulder as they reach the door is what used to be her sister licking her bloodstained lips.

  

* * *

 

 

 They barely make it outside before Nicole is coughing up bile into the snow, Wynonna doing her best to keep her on her feet.

Wynonna helps her to the cruiser parked a few feet away, propping her against the front fender, trying to decide if she’s ready to have her firearm back.  If Nicole is anything like her, then she’ll take comfort in knowing it’s there, letting the cold weight on her hip anchor her in the moment.  A life preserver that grounds instead of floating, dragging you under to drown in reality rather than letting you get carried away on waves of _what ifs_ and _might have beens_ and c _oulda, woulda, shouldas_.

She reaches around to where the Nighthawk is tucked snugly into the waistband of her jeans, her fingers curling around the textured wooden grip that is digging into the small of her back.  But she’s interrupted before she can withdraw it to hand back over to Nicole.

“Wynonna, I…” Nicole rasps, her voice raw with emotion, the acid still lingering in her throat corroding the words as they pass.  “I never...  She said that I _forced_ …  But I didn’t.  I _swear_.”

“Slow down, Haught.”  Wynonna stiffens against the subject matter but does her best to sound reassuring.  She had experienced firsthand what it was like to be on the receiving end of that _thing_ in the barn. 

 _No one_ deserves _that_.

“I never meant to push her.  _God,_ is that what she really thinks?”

And just like that, Nicole slides off the front of the car, falling to her hands and knees, retching violently again, her entire body heaving and heaving and heaving with nothing left to give. 

They’re both running on empty and have been for days, but sheer force of will can’t sustain them forever. 

Wynonna feels an uncharacteristic amount of sympathy for the woman at her feet.  She and Waverly have obviously not been together very long, but whatever they have is real enough that Waverly had told Wynonna that she loved Nicole.  And that is not something Waverly says easily. 

Wynonna has learned that the hard way. 

But she’s relatively certain Nicole hadn’t heard Waverly’s hushed declaration.  May not have heard her say it yet _at all_.  Instead, she’s hearing scathing words specifically designed to dismantle their fledgling relationship.

And they aren’t ready to walk over hot coals together yet.

They’re still walking on eggshells right now.

“Nicole…” Wynonna says, her voice gentler now.  “You can’t think like that.  _She_ didn’t say anything.  That _thing_ in there isn’t _Waverly_.”

“I knew,” Nicole whispers, the confession soft against the harsh wind that carries the words away.

“What?” Wynonna asks, wondering if her ears are playing tricks on her as she pulls Nicole back to her feet and rests her against the front of the car again.

“I knew,” Nicole admits again, her shoulders sagging as she slumps forward to rest her elbows on her knees.  “I knew it wasn’t her.”

“Then why did you…”  Wynonna frowns, her vision haunted by the image of the _thing_ that was definitely _not_ Waverly smirking at her before pretending to be innocent and helpless when Nicole had arrived.

“I _knew_ it in my head,” Nicole mumbles, her gaze dropping to the wound on her palm, her finger tracing the perfect ring of teeth marks.  “But my heart wanted to believe that I had my Waverly back.”

“We all want to believe that,” Wynonna says, her voice strained and stretched and heavy.  She wishes she hadn’t thrown her bottle of whiskey at the door.

Nicole suddenly goes rigid, leaning away from Wynonna, putting a short but meaningful distance between the two of them.

“You were…”  Her eyes narrow.  “You had Peacemaker aimed at her.  Whether I believed her or not, I couldn’t just let you…”  Her jaw clenches, her teeth grinding together.  “How could you, Wynonna?”

“I wasn’t…”  Wynonna sighs in frustration, slumping down on the fender next to Nicole, raking a hand through her wild hair.  The tension is palpable when she turns to face the other woman.  “It was threatening to hurt her, Nicole.  I shouldn’t have reacted, but I…  I couldn’t let it…”

The sudden warmth that envelops her hand is unexpected, and Wynonna blinks at it several times before it registers.  Nicole has reached over, lacing their fingers together, squeezing gently before speaking again, the sharpness in her voice from before now gone.

“It won’t.”  Wynonna looks up to see Nicole watching her, eyes soft, a hint of moisture at the corners.  Her voice is thick when she speaks again.  “We won’t let it hurt her, Wynonna.”

Wynonna remains silent for a long while.  She wants to believe Nicole.  She had spoken the words so earnestly.  So full of conviction.  She wants so desperately to get lost in the innocent idealism.  The belief that good always wins.  That the hero always saves the day.

But she’s broken and jaded and cynical and knows what happens when you put too much stock in hope.

Clearing her throat awkwardly, she pushes off the front of the car with a nervous laugh, reaching again behind her back to pull out Nicole’s gun.

“You, uh…  You think you’re ready to have this back again?”

Nicole presses her lips together while her brow furrows momentarily, something briefly flashing across her face, but then it’s gone right along with the moment they’d shared.

“Yeah,” she says, holding her hand out.  “Yeah, I’m alright now.”

Wynonna slaps the gun into her hand, barrel down, and watches as Nicole easily slides it back into her holster.  She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow.  “Don’t shoot me, Haught.”

Nicole snorts involuntarily at the joke that’s been between them since that night in the morgue.

“We’ll see,” she deadpans with a shrug.

For the first time since she burst into the barn, Wynonna has a chance to fully take in Nicole’s appearance.  Her face is splattered with mud, dried and caked on her pale skin, parts of it smeared along her cheek.  Her clothes are no better, the same mud streaked all down her parka and jeans in areas that were certainly not from just throwing up outside the barn, the bottoms of her pant legs completely soaked through.

And a large portion of her hair is missing.

“What the fuck happened to you, Haughtstuff?”

Nicole looks down at herself, pulling the flaps of her parka open and examining the state of her clothing after digging for treasure.

“Oh…”

“Did you take a detour and go mud wrestling?  I woulda paid to see that.”

“No, Earp.”  Heat flares in Nicole’s cheeks as she rolls her eyes.  But then a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth, and when she speaks again, Wynonna thinks she might actually be vibrating.  “I _found_ something.”

Wynonna’s heart lurches in her chest and she has to beat it into submission, reminding it how they feel about optimism.  Finding a quick fix at the Blacksmith’s isn’t the kind of luck Earps have.

It’s called a _curse_ for a reason.

“Mattie had something that will help?” she asks skeptically.

Nicole shrugs a shoulder and nods her head toward the interior of her squad car.  “Check the passenger seat.”

Wynonna eyes her suspiciously and shuffles over to the car, squinting to see through the glass in the darkness before wrenching the door open.  She immediately spots the leather-bound book, adorned with feathers and nestled into its wrapping atop an unfamiliar quilt.

Just as she’s reaching out to grab it, she notices the two large yellow eyes peering at her from the backseat.

 _“Jesus fuck!”_ she yells, stumbling backward, tripping over the pile of firewood stacked against the side of the barn.  She lands hard on her ass, her shoulder jarring into the frozen ground.  _“What the shit?!”_   She tries to draw Peacemaker, but given the odd angle at which she landed, it’s trapped beneath her.

Nicole laughs and moves to lean over Wynonna, her hands resting on her knees as she looks down at her.

“Glad to know I wasn’t the only one,” she says with a crooked grin.  “I see you met my new friend.”

Wynonna, still twisting around in the snow trying to reach her gun, glares up at Nicole.

“For fuck’s sake, Haught.  Is that _thing_ what happened to your hair?”

Nicole winces and her expression turns a little darker.

“No.”  She runs her fingers instinctively through section of hair at the back of her head.  “Well.  Sort of.”  Wynonna raises a questioning eyebrow.  “Lawnmower blade,” is all Nicole offers in answer.

_“…What?”_

“Don’t ask,” Nicole mutters, offering Wynonna a hand and hauling her to her feet.

“What the hell _is_ that thing?” Wynonna asks, leaning to the side slightly so she can see over Nicole’s shoulder, trying to make out the figure cloaked in the shadows behind the Plexiglas.  “Did you trap a demon?”  Her hand reflexively moves to Peacemaker again.  “Is it a Revenant?”

“No,” Nicole chuckles.  “No.”

She steps away from Wynonna, moving to the rear door and opening it slowly.  Wynonna’s muscles tighten, coiled and ready to spring if necessary, her gun drawn and held in a death grip in front of her waist. 

When Nicole steps aside, a creature emerges from the backseat, first head and then paws and then massive body.  It stalks forward, finally stepping into the ring of dull illumination created by the dome light in the patrol car.

An _enormous_ dog.

Its silvery fur practically glows in the soft light, giving it an almost celestial appearance. 

Except for the eyes.

The yellow eyes are piercing, looking through Wynonna, right down to the tendrils of insecurity she keeps tucked away in her chest where they feed and grow and wrap themselves around her heart.  She shudders under the intense scrutiny, raising Peacemaker defensively.

The dog postures, the ridge on its back rising at the show of aggression.  When it lets out a low rumble, Wynonna is almost certain she can actually feel it reverberating in her bones.

“Easy now, Earp,” Nicole says, stepping forward quickly.  “He’s a good boy.”  She stops next him, stroking a hand through the fur on his back, and he immediately relaxes, leaning into her touch.

 _“He?”_ Wynonna asks, still not lowering her gun.

“Yeah.  I think he was Mattie’s dog.  He was practically starving when I found him.”

He sits at Nicole’s side, continuing to nuzzle into her hand as she scratches behind his ears, his thick tail thumping softly against the snow behind him.

“Great,” Wynonna mutters.  “Another puppy.”  Even sitting, his head still comes to well above Nicole’s waist.  “A _giant_ fucking puppy.”

“Hey,” Nicole scolds.  “Without him, I wouldn’t have found the book.”

Wynonna cocks her head, noticing for the first time that his paws are also covered in the same mud that is caked on Nicole’s jeans and boots.

“So that’s where the…” she waves her hand at their feet, “came from?”

“Mhm.  Would you believe it?  Mattie hid the book under the land mine.”

“She _what?”_

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Nicole chuckles.  “I never would have found it if he hadn’t told me where to look.”

“He _told_ you?”  Wynonna finally lowers Peacemaker, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“Yeah.  Well…  No.  I mean, he…”  Nicole chews on her lip and shakes her head.  “Hell, I don’t know.  Whatever.  The important part is we have the book now.”

“Is there anything in there that can help us?” Wynonna asks, trying not to sound desperate.  A wave of hope is welling up inside her and it’s all she can do to quell it.  She holsters her weapon and edges toward the car, keeping a wary eye on the huge dog.

“I don’t know yet.  I came back as soon as I found it.”  Nicole ducks her head into the car quickly and retrieves the tome, moving around to join Wynonna by the fender.  “Apparently it was a good thing I did,” she adds, side-eyeing Wynonna.

Wynonna recoils at the jab, clenching her teeth to keep from saying something she might regret later.  Nicole flips the book open on the hood of the car, clicking on her Maglite.  She turns the pages slowly and they lean in close, scrutinizing the diagrams and sketches and fragments of writing scribbled in English and the strange symbols.

“I think some of this might be from one of the languages of the First Nations,” Nicole says, pausing to look at Wynonna.  “Do you know what any of it means?”

“No fucking clue.”

She knew it was too good to be true.  No way they would find a page with “How to Exorcise Your Loved One” scrawled across the top, followed by a list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions.  Instead they found something that only Waverly would be able to decipher, which does them a fat lot of good.

She feels like they are running out of time.  Each grain of sand that passes through the hourglass leaves a tiny incision on its way down to join the others and Wynonna is left to bleed out slowly, death by a thousand cuts, before suffocating beneath the weight of it all. 

She knows full well that when that _thing_ gets bored, it will not hesitate to put an end to Waverly and move on to its next victim.  The only solution Wynonna can think of is to make sure it doesn’t get bored.

“Aright, Haught.  You know what this means,” she says as she walks to the porch and begins rummaging in the wood box by the front door.

“Uhh…  what?”  Nicole closes the book, swinging her flashlight around to track Wynonna’s movement. 

“Time for you to hit the books.  Figure out what that damn thing says.”  Wynonna stands up, squinting into the beam of light and making her way back down the wooden steps.

“And what are you gonna be doing, Earp?”

Wynonna raises her hand, revealing a fresh bottle of whiskey she’d fished out of the storage area.

“I’m gonna keep it entertained,” she says, jiggling the bottle dramatically.  “Do try and be quick.  Netflix and kill is not really my ideal date.”

“Wynonna…” Nicole hesitates.

“Just go, Haught.  I’ll be fine.” 

She turns toward the barn and finds that while they were distracted, the dog had found his way to the door.  He’s sitting statue straight in front of it, sniffing the air, his hackles raised.  His ears swivel forward, picking up something Wynonna can’t hear, and he bares his teeth, letting out a dangerous growl.

“You want to keep him with you?  He might be helpful if something happens.”

“Don’t want him anywhere near her,” Wynonna says forcefully, her mind suddenly filled with images of his snout covered in blood and Waverly hanging limply in the chair with her throat ripped out.  She shakes her head violently.  “Keep him out of the barn, Nicole.”

“Okay…”  It seems like Nicole wants to say more, but she thinks better of it, instead gathering up the book and heading toward the house.  “C’mon, buddy.  We got work to do.”

The dog growls one final time and then turns to follow after Nicole. 

Wynonna could have sworn his eyes were glowing when he looked at her as he passed.

Taking a deep breath and a long pull of whiskey to steady her nerves, Wynonna pushes the barn door open and steps once again in front of the firing squad.

  

* * *

 

 Wynonna imagines she’s a teenager.

Pretends that she – _It_ – is a low budget horror film, a flickering television with dramatic music and muted screams in the background while she makes out with her whiskey bottle on the makeshift straw bed.  She’s not sure how well her plan is working, but judging by the significantly decreased amount of alcohol remaining, she figures they must be rounding second and heading for third, so it can’t be all bad.

Not to mention that she’s completely lost the plot of the movie in the process.  That _thing_ continues to hurl insults at her in Waverly’s voice, but none of them are sticking anymore because Wynonna is failing to even process any of the words at this point.

Which was the entire goddamn goal in the first place.

“To small victories,” Wynonna mutters and raises the bottle to her lips again.

The phone in her pocket buzzes and it nearly gets lost in the buzzing in her own head, but it’s persistent and she eventually registers the vibrations against her ass.  An advance warning, signaling that her fevered makeout session is over because mom and dad are on their way home early.

With a heavy sigh, she sets her whiskey bottle aside long enough to pull out her phone and squint at the overly bright screen, trying to focus on the new message through blurred vision.

It’s Nicole.

And she thinks she might have found something.

Wynonna half scoots, half rolls off the bales of straw, dragging the blanket along with her.  She stumbles toward the door, kicking the corner of the quilt off of the buckle on her boot as she goes.  She continues tuning out the voice of her sister just like she has been for hours until she reaches the door, when something finally breaks through.

_“Running away again?  We all know it’s what you’re best at.”_

Wynonna snorts.

She can’t help it.

“Ya need ta get some new material, ya cheap Buffy knockoff,” she says, rolling her eyes.  The words are thick and heavy on her tongue, soaked in whiskey and dripping with sarcasm.  “Ya got access to at leas’ six differ’nt languages, and yer already recycling your insults.  Nobody findsa broken record intimidating.”

She’s out the door before she – _It_ – can even respond.

  

* * *

 

 Nicole paces the front porch, her nose buried in the tome, mumbling to herself.  The hand not holding the book waves wildly in the air as though she is having a conversation with some invisible entity, and the enormous dog is perched near the steps, his head moving back and forth as he tracks her movement, never once taking his eyes off of her, even when Wynonna approaches from the barn.

Wynonna stumbles twice over the short distance, the snow crunching loudly under her clumsy footsteps.  The dog bristles when she fumbles her way up the steps next to him and braces herself against the railing to support her numb limbs, his ears swiveling in her direction but otherwise keeping his attention on Nicole.

She still hasn’t noticed the other woman’s presence, and Wynonna takes the opportunity to observe her for a moment through bleary eyes.  Her hair hangs limp around her shoulders, the missing portion obvious against the back of her neck.  Her cheeks are stretched tightly and her eyes are sunken and droopy, the dark bags underneath them too heavy, making them sag low.

The normally bright spark in her eyes is dull and faded and her already lanky figure is even thinner, the sweater beneath her parka hanging loosely from her frame.  The trickling flow of blood from the fresh wound in her palm stopped hours ago, but she has it wrapped up in gauze just the same.

Wynonna wonders if it’s so she doesn’t have to look at it.  Doesn’t have to be reminded of Waverly’s teeth sinking into her flesh, mocking her as she – _It_ – licks the blood from her lips.  A fresh stab wound to the heart every time she sees it.

She feels herself sliding down the railing and she doesn’t resist, letting herself land in a heap, accompanied by the sloshing of the whiskey in her bottle.  When she accidentally bumps into the dog sitting next to her, he growls grumpily, and it’s that noise that finally breaks through to Nicole.

“Easy, buddy,” she mumbles absentmindedly

She comes to an abrupt halt when she realizes there are two sets of eyes staring up at her rather than just one.

“Wynonna.”  Nicole blinks at her a few times, as though surprised by her presence.  Then her eyes go wide.  “You got my text.”

“That I did, Haughtschtuff,” Wynonna slurs, taking another drink from her bottle.  “Y’know.  I was jus’ right in there.”  Her head lolls to the side, indicating the barn.  “Ya di’nt haveta text me.  Coulda jus’ stuck yer head in.”

She begins to mumble and drops her gaze to her bandaged hand.  “I, uh…  I didn’t want to, uh…  I couldn’t…”  She quickly shoves her hand into the pocket of her jacket.  “Anyway.  I think I might have found something.”

“So ya said.”  Wynonna digs her phone out of her pocket again, waving it up at Nicole. 

Nicole frowns down at Wynonna, her brow furrowed and her eyes uncertain.  Wynonna can feel the waves of judgment and concern and pity rolling off of her, heavy in the air and palpable between them, and she’s honestly not sure which is worse.

So what if she’s drunk?  Wynonna clutches the bottle to her chest.  Clings to it like a shield.  You don’t walk into the belly of the beast unarmed, and the whiskey allows her to partially deflect the incoming blows.

But it also leads to being misunderstood.

She does a thankless job.  Putting her ass on the line over and over to keep the people in Purgatory safe.  And what does she get for her trouble?  Spite and mockery and disdain.  Never graciousness.  Always resentment.

The look Nicole is giving her right now is proof of that.  She doesn’t understand that Wynonna is trying to protect her.  Trying to save her from what’s inside the barn right now.  From what’s inside _Waverly_.  After what happened earlier, it’s obvious that Nicole doesn’t possess the right armor to survive that. 

Not yet. 

But Wynonna does. 

And she’s not afraid to use it.

She takes another long pull of her whiskey.  When Nicole still hasn’t said anything, Wynonna rolls her eyes and drags herself to her feet with great effort.

“Well?” she asks expectantly.  “Whatcha got, Red?”

Nicole raises an eyebrow and watches her for another long moment, possibly waiting to see if Wynonna is going to lose her balance and topple over.  Eventually, she returns her attention to the book in her hands.

“Okay.  So.”  Nicole takes a deep breath to steady herself and then launches into a whirlwind of an explanation.  “I compared these strange runes to a bunch of books Waverly had with the rest of her research stuff.  And I’m like…  ninety-eight percent sure it’s the language of the Blackfoot Nation.”

She pauses just long enough to look up and make sure Wynonna is still paying attention and then goes back to pointing at various things on the pages.

“This entry here.  I’m struggling with the translation, but I _think_ it is something about chasing away the darkness?  And there’s also this symbol here.  It’s like a sun or something.  I think.  And it’s got little flames drawn on the points.”

Wynonna is squinting at the jumble of pictures, shaking her head and refocusing to keep the images from swimming around the page.  She’s finding it difficult to connect the dots Nicole is giving her, and is not following the point that she is obviously leading up to.

“Look,” Nicole says, obviously picking up on Wynonna’s failure to comprehend.  “I know it’s not much.  A longer shot than any of Chris Kyle’s.  But right now, it’s all we have.  And I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”

Frustration.  Anxiousness.  Desperation.

Now _these_ are things Wynonna is familiar with.

She scrunches up her nose and takes another drink.  “What ‘zactly are ya wantin’ ta do?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole admits, her shoulders sagging a little.  “I thought maybe…  Like…  Well, what if I drew this sun symbol on the floor around her?  Maybe the little drawings of flames on the points are supposed to mean candles?  You could light the candles and I could try to read this thing.  Or whatever.”

Wynonna flinches.  The last time they’d tried some kind of hoodoo voodoo, as Doc had called it, Dolls had imitated Peter Pan and they’d had to use a Taser on him before watching him almost drown on dry land.  She’s not really eager for a repeat performance from her sister.

Nicole misinterprets her reaction as skepticism.

“I know,” she scoffs.  “I get it.  There’s this whole other world out there, and _you_ are the expert and _I_ am just the newbie that got thrown in the deep end.  And you think I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to this shit.”

The retort Wynonna is about to throw is so sharp that the effort it takes for her to hold it back slices into her tongue.  Instead, she watches Nicole begin pacing again in silence.  She looks so ragged.  Beaten.  Defeated.  The last vestiges of her hope fluttering away like the feathers dangling from the spine of the book, twisting violently in the cold night wind.

“I know, okay?” Nicole finally rasps.  “I know it’s a stupid idea.  But it’s all I have.”  She stops and turns to look at Wynonna again.  “I’ve got to get her back.  Wynonna, _please_.”  Her bloodshot eyes are pleading and her voice cracks.  “I _love_ her,” she whispers.

Wynonna would laugh if she wasn’t already choking on her whiskey. 

How did she end up in this position again? 

It’s the worst case of déjà vu she’s ever had.

But the stakes are just as high this time as they had been before.  And Nicole is right.  They’re rapidly running out of other options, and this may well be the last chance they have.

“Fuck it,” she says, draining the rest of what’s left in the bottle.  “Let’s do it, Haughtschot.”

“…Really?”  The surprise is plainly evident on Nicole’s face.  She was clearly not expecting Wynonna’s agreement.

 _“Really, really,”_ Wynonna replies sarcastically.

“Seriously, Wynonna?” Nicole snorts.  “You’re quoting _Shrek_ to me right now?”

Wynonna shrugs.  “We’re ‘bout to perform some ritual out uvva witch’s spellbook.  You really gonna tell me a movie that mocks fairy tales ain’t ‘propriate humor right now?”

Nicole blinks at her a few times and then just shrugs her shoulders. 

“I suppose that’s a fair point, Earp.”  She jerks her head toward her squad car parked between the house and the barn.  “I’ve got some pavement chalk in my accident reconstruction kit.  You think you can handle digging up some candles?”

Wynonna gives her a mock salute and disappears into the house without answering.

  

* * *

 

 “Put him in the house before we go in there.”

Nicole hums from where she’s leaning against the hood of her patrol car, tracing her fingers over the diagrams on the page of the book again.

“I mean it, Haught.  Keep him away from her.”

 _“Christ,_ Wynonna.  _Okay_.”

Wynonna waits for her by the barn door, looking down at the bundle of mismatched candles she’d gathered from Waverly’s room and the kitchen and the mantle above the fireplace.  She can’t help seeing her own wreck of a life reflected in collection of misshapen wax, twisted and melting and wasting away beneath the flames that rage all around her wherever she goes.

“You ready for this?” she asks Nicole skeptically when she returns, her hands full of her own supplies.

“Yeah,” Nicole answers weakly.  “I have to be.  For her.”

Wynonna reaches into the pocket of her jacket and withdraws a battered flask.  She pops the top and holds it out to Nicole.

“Maybe some liquid courage will help.  Looks like you could use it.  You’re even more pale than normal.  And that’s saying something, Ginger.”

“Wynonna, what the fuck…” Nicole says with exasperation.  “Where did that come from?  I made you drink that pot of coffee for a reason.”

“Daddy always had the best hiding places.”  Wynonna laughs dryly and takes a drink.

Nicole’s brow furrows as she processes the implications of what Wynonna had just said.  Wynonna sees an uncomfortable realization play across her face and interrupts her by jabbing the flask into her chest before any unwanted sympathy gets dragged into this.

“Just take a hit already, Haughshot,” Wynonna says impatiently.

Nicole frowns and looks for a moment like she might argue, but then she shifts the items in her hands and takes the flask from Wynonna.  With a long sigh, heavy with the weight of the world, she takes a healthy swig.

To Wynonna’s surprise, Nicole doesn’t cough or splutter or even flinch.  She’s nearly drained the entire Homestead of all its secret reserves over the course of the past several days, and to be quite frank, she’s down to the last resort rotgut. 

The kind that could peel the paint right off the wall.

And Nicole had just been completely unfazed by it.

Perhaps she’s stronger than Wynonna’s been giving her credit for.

She retrieves the flask and tucks it back in the pocket of her jacket.  When Nicole moves to open the barn door, Wynonna surprises herself by reaching out to lay a hand on her arm.

“Remember, Nicole,” she says, her voice much softer than it had just been a minute ago.  “It’s not her.  It’s not Waverly.”

Nicole refuses to look at her, keeping her jaw set and eyes fixed stubbornly forward, but she does give a small nod and then yanks the door open.

“Let’s do this, Earp.”

  

* * *

 

  _“Awww.  Arts and crafts time?  How sweet.”_

Nicole pays no attention to the taunting as she continues carefully drawing the diagram from the book that somewhat resembles a sun.  Wynonna had swept away the straw beneath her sister, and the two of them had slid a sheet of plywood under the back legs of the chair Waverly is suspended in.  Now Nicole is using the chalk from her kit to make the symbol as large as the piece of wood will allow her to, and Wynonna is following behind her, placing a candle at the apex of each point that surrounds the outer ring.

“Try not to burn the place down, Earp,” Nicole mutters, putting the finishing touches on the design.

“Do I look like Drew Barrymore?”

Nicole looks up from dusting her fingers off on her jeans and blinks at Wynonna a few times.

“…What?”

Wynonna rolls her eyes.  _“Firestarter?_   Burning down the barn?”

The blank look doesn’t leave Nicole’s face.  “Do you _ever_ take anything seriously, Wynonna?”

“Not if I can help it,” she answers before taking another drink from the flask and then fumbling with the lighter a couple of times before flicking it to life.

“Maybe I should do that,” Nicole says, snatching the lighter out of Wynonna’s hands.

_“A candlelit evening.  Now we’re getting somewhere, baby.”_

Nicole begins lighting the candles in the large circle around the chair and ignores the way she – _It_ – purrs in Waverly’s voice, low and seductive.

_“But I think you’re a little overdressed.  I seem to remember there being something about a sexy black dress.”_

Wynonna can see the muscles in Nicole’s face twitching, but to her credit, she doesn’t react, refusing to rise to the bait.  When she’s made her way back around to the beginning, they share a look and then shrug before Nicole opens the tome to the page she has bookmarked.

 _“Going to read me a bedtime story, Officer?  Do make it a good one.  Your voice does_ things _to her.”_

Nicole’s face heats up as she and Wynonna lean close to look at the symbols on the page.

“So what now, Haughtstuff?  You just read that shit and say the magic words?”

 _“Just hearing your voice.  Seeing you smile.  It makes her tingle every time.  So_ many _tingles.”_

The tension building in the room is so thick Wynonna can feel it pressing against her skin.  She – _It_ – grins wickedly.  Wynonna shifts uncomfortably and Nicole almost drops the book.

“Yeah, uh…  I guess so,” Nicole mumbles in answer to Wynonna’s original question, her head bowed so low her chin is touching her chest.  She sticks her free hand in her pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper covered with her cramped handwriting, the normally small, neat script instead a jumbled mess of scribbles.  She takes a deep breath and prepares to begin.

_“She thinks about you.  When she’s alone.  Thinks about kissing you.  Thinks about touching you.  And it’s your name on her lips when she cries out.”_

“Don’t talk about her like that!” is what comes out of Nicole’s mouth instead of the words that she had roughly translated.  She starts to take a step forward, but Wynonna grabs her by the arm and yanks her back.

_“Oh, the things she thinks about.  Things she wants to do to you.  Things she wants you to do to her.  Things like—”_

_“No!”_ Nicole yells, struggling against Wynonna’s grip.  “We haven’t even…  Not yet.  And, you…  _You_ don’t get to be the one to say those things.”

 _“Haught!_   Pull yourself together!”  Wynonna steps in front of her, shoving her back forcefully until she stumbles against the side of the straw bed. 

She knew this was going to happen.  _Again_.  Nicole is vulnerable, and that _thing_ knows exactly which buttons to push.

“Nicole,” she says, far more gently.  “Look at me.”  She waits until Nicole stops resisting and finally looks up at her, face flushed with both embarrassment and anger.  “You need to stay focused, Nic.  We have a job to do.  _You_ have a job to do,” she says, tapping the book still in one of Nicole’s hands.

Nicole coughs awkwardly as she pulls herself up off the bales of straw, and her face grows even redder.  She rubs the back of her neck nervously when she meets Wynonna’s eye again.

“Uhh…  That was…  I mean, it was true.”  She shuffles her feet and fiddles with the feathers on the book.  “What I said.  That we, uhh…  you know…  that we haven’t—”

“Ah dah dah,” Wynonna interrupts, wincing and throwing her hand up to stop Nicole from going any further.  “No.  No, I do not want to talk about this.  At all.  Ever.”

“R-right.  Yeah.  S-sorry…”

“Just…”  She spins Nicole around by the shoulders and points her back toward their sigil, hoping they aren’t about to open the Hellmouth.  “Now get on with it.”

“Right.”

They hold the book between them while she – _It_ – continues to rattle off inappropriate things that Nicole tries to ignore while she squints at the unfamiliar words she’d scribbled.

“Here goes nothing…” she breathes.

“Wait.”  Nicole frowns and looks at Wynonna with confusion.  “What are these?”

“What are what?” Nicole asks, looking down at where Wynonna is pointing on the page.

“These little squiggly things.  You didn’t draw them with the rest of it.”

“Oh.  Those aren’t part of th—  Oh, shit.”

“What?  What _‘oh shit,’_ Haught?” Wynonna asks, her heart sinking.  She knew this was a last ditch effort, but somehow, hope had managed to creep in, sinking its hooks deep into parts of herself that she tried to keep closed off.  And now it’s dragging her under, thanks to two little words.

“I think those things are supposed to go with these symbols here.”  Nicole taps two groups of runes and then runs a finger down the list of words she’d translated until she finds what she’s looking for.  _“Si’paat’si’maan_ and _ka’ksi’mi,”_ she says, struggling with the pronunciation.

“See the pot, see the man, and can’t see me?” Wynonna parrots poorly, wrinkling her nose.

“No,” Nicole answers, frustration evident in the sigh that follows.  “It means… uh…  hang on.”  She flips the piece of paper over and studies it for a minute.  “Sweet grass and sage.  They’re sacred to the Blackfoot tribe.”

“Okay, so why are they squiggled in the middle of this sun?” Wynonna asks.

“Ummm…  No idea,” Nicole admits sheepishly.  “Maybe…   Maybe we’re supposed to scatter some inside the sigil I drew?”

“Well, that’s just great, Nicole.  Do you happen to have some sweet grass and sage lying around?  Because I sure as fuck don’t.”  Wynonna begins pacing.

“Uhhh…  actually…”

Wynonna spins around to look at Nicole so quickly she almost gives herself whiplash.

“You mean to tell me…  you actually _do_ have some sweet grass and sage stashed somewhere?  Are you shitting me?”

“Hold this,” Nicole says, thrusting the book and the piece of paper into Wynonna’s hands.  “I’ll be right back.”

Nicole hurries out the door and Wynonna finds herself alone with Waverly again.

Well.

Not _Waverly._

_“Your sister is quite creative, really.  Have you enjoyed learning all of the things she wants to do with that puppy?”_

Wynonna stiffens, feeling the protective big sister instinct clawing at her ribs, but she remains silent.  She hadn’t wanted to hear about these things when Waverly was with Champ.  In fact, every time she’d seen him pawing at her sister like a piece of meat, she wished she had followed through when she’d had the knife to his throat in the room above Shorty’s.

Hearing these things about Waverly and Nicole, however, was an entirely different beast altogether.  She may have barely spoken to Champ Hardy, but Nicole is…  Well, she’s not sure exactly _what_ Nicole is.  Her head tries to fill in the blank with the word _friend_ , but her heart wonders if she even knows what that word really means.

Wynonna thinks Nicole _might be_ a friend.  Sharer of donuts.  Trader of sarcastic barbs.  Occasional drinking buddy.  Plus, there’s no denying that you share a special kind of bond when you’ve both survived history’s most notorious serial killer.  Who also just happened to be a _literal_ demon.

And all of this without even trying to get into her pants.  Which is more than she can say for either Doc or Dolls right now.

But the irony of that hits her harder than a 2x4 to the face.

No.  No, despite the acknowledgement of her top-shelf ass, Nicole hadn’t been trying to get into _her_ pants.

Turns out she’d been trying to get into _Waverly’s_ all along.

And where did that leave Wynonna?  Had Nicole just been using her the entire time in order to get closer to Waverly?

She’d been shocked when Willa had revealed their secret, and she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that in the midst of the chaos, she’d felt a knife twisting in her gut knowing that Willa had found out about it first.  Knowing that Waverly hadn’t been able to come to her with it until she was forced to with no other choice. 

And what is she supposed to do with that?  With the revelation that someone who may or may not be a close friend, may or may not be fucking her baby sister? 

Part of her wants to feel relieved.  To be glad that Waverly has someone who is literally willing to take a bullet for her.  Who is willing to light candles and recite nonsense in order to get her back.

The other part wants to rip Nicole limb from limb for daring to even _look_ at Waverly.

It’s a precarious balance, and Wynonna isn’t sure right now which side she wants to win.

_“Your little sister isn’t nearly the sweet and innocent angel you like to think she is.”_

Right.  And this jackass isn’t helping, either.

Nicole chooses that moment to reappear, rushing back in with a small box in her hands.

“I found…”  Nicole halts in her tracks, looking back and forth between the two of them, having no idea the internal battle she just walked in on.  “…it.”  She flinches at the sudden sharpness in Wynonna’s eyes, the normally sparkling blue now hard, glinting steel.  “What is happening right now?”

“Nothing,” Wynonna snaps, and tries not to wince when she realizes how harsh it comes out.  “Just…  What did you find?”

Nicole holds up the cigar box between them.

“It was tucked under Mattie’s mattress.  Has a few of her personal effects.  A photograph.  Some kind of weird pendant.”  Wynonna gives her an expectant look, but Nicole continues before she can interrupt.  “And _this,”_ she says flipping open the lid.

Bundled on top of the rest of the items are the sprigs of dried sage and sweet grass that had been pressed between the folded parchments before Nicole had thrown the box across the room.

“Unbelievable,” Wynonna whispers, fighting back the hope that is threatening to rise again.

“Exactly,” Nicole says, her hands trembling slightly when she pulls the bundle out and sets the box on the bed.  She takes a few cautious steps closer to the sheet of plywood, almost as though she expects to get bitten again, and scatters the sprigs in the middle of the sun, careful not to let any of them land anywhere near the open flames of the candles.

Wynonna holds the book out, and Nicole steps next to her again, though she is visibly trying to shield her body from Wynonna this time.  Wynonna tries to pretend the hesitancy doesn’t hurt and bites back a curse.

They’ve wasted enough time.

“No more stalling, Haught.  Get to it.”

Nicole takes a deep breath, clears her throat, and begins to read from her notes.

 _“Ksi’ski’na’tsi   ko’komíki’sómma.  Ootah’koi’na’tsi   ki’sómma.”_   The foreign words are clumsy in her mouth, and she stumbles over them more than once.  _“Si’ski’na’tsi   sáí’ittsikotoyi.  Ómahkapi’si   moos’ki’tsi’pah’pi.”_

Waverly’s body begins to convulse, causing the chair to rock on its back legs, the taut ropes suspending it quivering dangerously.  Her eyes roll back in her head and she lets out a guttural moan that seizes Wynonna’s heart right in her chest.

 _“What the fuck did you do, Nicole?!”_ Wynonna yells.  She drops the flask in her hand and rushes forward.

“Shit, Wynonna!” Nicole panics.  “I don’t _know_.  I speak _French,_ not fucking _Blackfoot!”_   She tosses the book haphazardly on the bed and joins Wynonna at Waverly’s other side.

Waverly goes still, her eyes closed and her mouth hanging open. 

“Waverly?”  Wynonna reaches forward and tentatively pushes as strand of damp hair off of Waverly’s sweaty forehead.  “Baby girl?”

The booming laughter that suddenly fills the barn makes both of them stumble backward, nearly knocking over candles in the process.

_“You fools.  Did you really think candles and some gobbledygook gibberish was going to do anything?”_

She – _It_ – drops her head and opens her eyes, her chest still heaving with laughter.

 _“I take that back.  You_ did _manage to entertain me.”_

Nicole cusses loudly and kicks a nearby stool sitting by a workbench that lines one of the dividers.  It hurtles across the room and splinters when it hits the outer wall.  She’s already out of the barn with the door slamming behind her by the time the last pieces have come to rest in a pile of straw.

Wynonna ignores the lead pooling in her stomach and blows out the candles before stooping to retrieve her flask from where she had discarded it prior.  She drags herself onto the bed, resting her back against the wall, and begins taking long gulps of the rotgut.

She tells herself that she knew it wasn’t going to work.  She tells herself that they had only done it to satisfy Nicole. 

She tells herself that she isn’t drowning in despair.

Turns out she’s never been a good listener.

  

* * *

 

 Silence.

It’s like music to her ears.

An entire fucking _symphony_ of silence, orchestrated just for her. 

The persistent ringing in her ears that fills the void, a low whine from the pull of a bow across the strings.  The whistling wind whipping through the cracks in the walls, a soft trill of the woodwinds.  The creaking of the boards as the drafty barn settles around her in the cold air, the faint harmonics of the brass.  The steady thump of her heart in her chest, a muted cadence from the percussion.

But her favorite thing about tonight’s performance is the featured melody.

The legato snores accented with staccato snorts, a quiet rhythm executed by a playful bass line.

Wynonna cherishes this part of the piece the most.  Because it only comes around in short, broken periods, once or twice a day.

And when it does, she can finally catch her breath.

They learned a long time ago that the _thing_ inside Waverly had endless energy.  But it was still bound by the limitations of the human body it was inhabiting.  And that meant that for a few blessed minutes every day, it would shut down long enough to recharge.

Which is when Nicole would usually sit with Waverly while Wynonna would fall unconscious from the alcohol and the hunger and the exhaustion. 

But after Nicole had stormed out earlier, Wynonna hadn’t seen her again.

She knows Nicole is still here.  The cruiser engine never started up.  And she’d heard the front door to the house slam nearly as loudly as the barn door had.  Wynonna hasn’t moved from her spot on the makeshift bed, and she had never heard the door to the house open a second time.  Which means Nicole has either buried herself in Waverly’s books again, or she has finally passed out for some much needed rest.

She hopes it’s the latter.

Because, quite frankly, Nicole looks like shit.

And Wynonna is worried she might be losing it.

So rather than running the risk of disturbing her if she happens to be sleeping, Wynonna has forfeited her break for the night in favor of keeping watch.

But at least there is the silence. 

The snoring is so much better than the scathing.  And she’s had about all she can handle for the day.

Just as her breathing is starting to even out into a dangerously steady rhythm, a faint rustling noise drags Wynonna’s consciousness back from the precipice of sweet oblivion with a rough jerk. 

She’s immediately alert, off the bed and on her feet, Peacemaker drawn.  She freezes and strains her ears, wondering if she’d encountered something that exists only in that unreachable space between wakefulness and sleep, neither a figment of imagination nor a fragment of reality.

But then she hears it again.  A rustling in the straw.

And it’s coming from…

… _above_ her?

Wynonna spins around, swinging Peacemaker up toward the rafters, though it’s hard to see anything in just the slivers of moonlight that seep through the slatted barn walls. 

She’d turned the overhead lights off around the time that her flask had run dry.  She couldn’t do anything to stem the tide of ridicule, but at least sitting in the dark had given her a modicum of respite from looking at her sister and seeing only swirling pools of inky blackness looking back at her.

She’s definitely regretting that decision now.

“Nicole?” she whispers hoarsely into the darkness. 

She gets no response other than the continued shifting of straw against the loose boards of the hayloft.  She slides her phone out of her pocket and squints at the sudden bright light of her screen.

Midnight.

The Witching Hour.

 _Fanfuckingtastic_.

The last time something had come calling at the Witching Hour, Doc and Waverly had gotten into a showdown with The Stone Witch, and Wynonna had come home to a wounded cowboy, a wounded sister, a dead Blacksmith, and three other zombified corpses they’d had to dispose of. 

She glances over her shoulder to see that Waverly’s body is still sleeping for the moment and then returns her attention to the loft.

“Haught, if that’s you, this is not fucking funny,” she says a bit louder, engaging the flashlight on her phone and sweeping it across the beams overhead.  It sends shadows crawling along every surface of the barn, and Wynonna’s skin crawls right along with them.

A muted _thump_ draws her attention and she raises her gun and the beam of light instantaneously. 

Standing a few feet away, just beneath the opening in the hayloft, is the enormous dog Nicole had brought back from Mattie’s with her.

Wynonna’s heart leaps into her throat when she sees his yellow eyes shining brightly in the light, and staggers backward when he stalks forward silently.  She throws a hand out to keep herself from falling, her phone slipping to the floor in the process.

 _“Shit,”_ she hisses as her hand searches the wall blindly. 

Even with the flashlight now pointing aimlessly at the ceiling, his eyes continue to glow on their own, two golden moons against a sea of black.

Her fingers finally find what they are looking floor and she flips the switch, the entire barn instantly flooded with incandescent light.  She blinks away the ensuing blindness, keeping Peacemaker trained on the animal as he continues to pad closer.

The sudden brightness causes Waverly’s eyelids to flutter and a few seconds later, she cracks them open one at a time, squinting in an attempt to focus.  Even though Wynonna is expecting it – it’s happened the same way every time – a part of her is still disappointed when they are a horrifying black instead of a beautiful hazel.

_“Did you miss me?”_

Waverly’s voice is raw and thick from sleep, but that doesn’t stop the smirk that follows.  It isn’t until a low humming sound begins emitting from the dog when he steps directly in front of her that she – _It_ – even becomes aware of his presence.

The moment he is noticed, all hell breaks loose.

The blackness spreads down into Waverly’s cheeks again, eyes growing wide when they land on the giant dog.  All pretenses are dropped, and the deep, layered voice laced with echoes returns.  She – _It_ – begins shrieking, screaming things in a language Wynonna can’t even begin to comprehend, thrashing against her bonds for the first time since being secured in the suspension rigging.

Wynonna frowns, confused by the violent reaction.  The humming sound intensifies, becoming a strange whirring noise, which further distresses the _thing_ inside her sister.  She’s worried Waverly is going to get hurt in the process, and she rushes forward to put herself between the dog and her captive.

Or at least she _tries_ to.

Instead, she discovers that she can’t move.  Feet nailed to the floor.  Arms glued to her side.  Adrenaline-fueled panic surges through her veins, but it has no effect on the paralysis gripping her. 

She remembers standing in the field with August Hamilton.  He had also frozen her in place.  Her limbs had felt cold.  Numb.  Heavy with lead and fear.

But this is different.

She’s still incapacitated, but the sensation is not the same.  Rather than icy cold, she feels a warmth radiating out from her chest.  She can’t move her arms and legs, but rather than feeling weighed down, it feels instead like she is floating in place.  Like she’s simply treading water in a warm swimming pool.

Despite the urgency of the situation, she feels an odd calmness wash over her.  Like something has reached out to soothe her turbulent emotions. 

It is simultaneously reassuring and disconcerting. 

Her attention returns to Waverly and the dog when he begins to growl, baring his teeth with his hackles raised.  A shadow of something passes over her sister’s face, and it takes Wynonna a minute to recognize it.

 _Terror_.

Pure, unadulterated terror.

And it takes Wynonna’s breath away. 

They had gotten physical with the _thing_ before, but to no effect.  They had performed a ritual from a witch’s spellbook, and she – _It_ – had laughed in their faces.  Wynonna had directly threatened it with Peacemaker.  Pressed it right up against Waverly’s forehead and it had merely taunted her.  _Dared_ her to pull the trigger.

But now she – _It_ – is face to face with a gigantic dog with glowing yellow eyes and the strange ability to hold Wynonna in place, and it is filled with sheer horror.  Thrashing and yelling and struggling to escape.

The low rumble in the dog’s throat grows to a loud snarl and Wynonna’s brow furrows when she remembers the images of the bloody snout she’d conjured previously.  She feels her panic rising again, fighting against the languid tranquility enveloping her.  She can’t let this dog rip her sister’s throat out, but there’s nothing she can do about it right now.

Or is there?

 _“Nicole!”_  

She may not be able to move, but she can still yell. 

And yell she does. 

_“Nicole!”_

She knows it’s a longshot.  Especially if Nicole is zoned out with Waverly’s books or in the shower or asleep upstairs.  But right now it’s all she’s got.

_“NICOLE!”_

Wynonna continues to yell, her voice growing hoarse as her throat protests at the strain.  She eventually trails off when a new development unfolds a few feet in front of her.  The intensity of the dog’s glowing eyes has reached a peak, and without warning, he throws his head back and begins to howl.

It’s unlike any other howling Wynonna has ever heard before.  She grew up in the country, around wolves and coyotes and hound dogs.  She’s heard them calling to the moon in the distance through the still of the night.  Heard them circling their prey.  Heard them treeing their targets.

And this?

This is _none_ of that.

His howl is deep and throaty.  Guttural.  _Haunting_. 

Waverly’s body is convulsing, her head thrown back, face contorted in pure agony.  She – _It_ – continues to cry out in the otherworldly voice, screaming in pain while tears stream down her cheeks.  The blackness retreats back toward her eyes where it seems to dissolve completely.

Wynonna has seen that happen before, right before she – _It_ – pretended to be Waverly again when pleading with Nicole.  But what happens _next_ is new.

He continues howling, and she – _It_ – continues to scream, head still pinned against the back of the reclined kitchen chair. 

And then something begins to ooze from her gaping mouth, thick and black and oily.

 _Definitely_ new.

Wynonna thinks it’s blood at first.  Is terrified that he sister is dying and she’s going to be forced to watch, unable to stop it.  But as it continues to ooze, she realizes it’s something else entirely, somehow being forced from Waverly’s body. 

It wriggles and shudders, writhes and slithers, pouring from her mouth and ears and even her eyes.

_“Nicole!”_

Wynonna tries to yell over the sound of the howling, but her throat is raw and her voice cracks.

She keeps trying anyway.

_“NICOLE!”_

The viscous substance merges together, bubbling and hissing and popping.  It’s somehow suspended in the air above Waverly’s head now, a vacillating globule, oil in water.

Waverly’s body is still rigid, stiff as a board and straining against the ropes that bind her, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, distant and unseeing.

The dog pauses momentarily to growl at the angry substance, then resumes his howling with fervor.  The entire barn is filled with powerful reverberations and the oily glob begins to vibrate violently.  It stretches thin, as though it is trying to keep itself together but can’t.  The edges of the pool begin to break apart, turning to a fine mist, and as he continues to howl, the mist creeps further and further in until the entire volume has turned to a swirling black vapor.

And then, with one final eerie screeching noise and a loud _crack_ …  It’s gone. 

Completely gone.

A gust of air rushes out of Waverly’s lungs and then her entire body suddenly goes lax.  Her eyes fall shut, and aside from her shallow breathing, she doesn’t move a muscle.

The dog huffs loudly and licks his chops, wanders over to the bed next to Wynonna, and flops down on it unceremoniously.

Wynonna stumbles forward clumsily, whatever invisible force that had been holding her in place now gone.  She’s at Waverly’s side in an instant, checking for a pulse.  When she finally finds one – barely; it’s thready, but it’s there – she cradles her head and kisses her temple.

“Waverly?”  She sounds like a teenage boy going through puberty when she speaks, but it doesn’t stop her from trying to wake her sister.  “Wave?  Baby girl, can you hear me?”

Nicole bursts through the barn door, rough and ragged and ready to shoot.  It startles Wynonna and she jumps back from Waverly, raising Peacemaker in response.

“I…  I woke up and there was…”  Nicole pants, out of breath.  “There was howling and screaming and…  and I thought I heard my name…”

“Oh, _now_ you show up,” Wynonna says dryly, shoving Peacemaker back into her holster.  “Thanks a lot, Haught.”

“What the fuck happened?”  Nicole staggers forward weakly, holstering her own firearm and cautiously approaching Waverly.  She hesitates for a moment, flexing her injured hand as she looks at Waverly’s limp body, mouth open and head lolled to one side, and then reaches out to gently run her fingers through Waverly’s hair.

“I…  I have no fucking idea, dude.”  Wynonna shrugs, trying to process what she had just seen.

Nicole looks up at her with confusion.  She tilts her head to the side when she notices the dog sprawled on the bed.

“What’s he doing in here?  Did you decide you were lonely?”

“Whaddya mean ‘what is he doing in here’?  You’re the one that let him in.”  Wynonna crosses her arms and narrows her eyes.  “After I specifically told you not to.”

“What?”  Nicole pulls a face, shaking her head.  “I didn’t let him in here.  He was in the house with me.  I…  I fell asleep at the kitchen table looking through Waverly’s books.”  She rubs at her shoulder, as though she’s only just remembered an ache in her muscles.

“Then how the hell did he get in?”

“I don’t know, Wynonna.  Maybe the door wasn’t latched all the way.”

“He didn’t come in through the door.”  Wynonna’s frown deepens.  Nothing is adding up.

“He…  didn’t come through the door?  …What?”

“I was sitting on that bed the entire time since you stormed out.  The barn door didn’t open once.”

“Maybe you nodded off, too, Earp.  It’s possible.”

“I did _not_ fall asleep.”  Wynonna’s arms begin to flail about.  “And you’re not listening to me, goddammit.  He didn’t come through the _door_.”  She stops and looks up at the rafters.  “He came in through the fucking _hayloft_.”

Nicole snorts, dragging a hand through her hair.

“Right.  The window in the hayloft is twenty feet off the ground, Wy.  I’m sure he just _flew_ right on up there, all by himself.”  She rolls her eyes.  “It’s okay to admit that you got some sleep.  You certainly needed it.”

“Fuck you,” Wynonna seethes, poking a finger into Nicole’s chest.  “He came in through the loft and jumped down through the trapdoor.  He landed in front of me and his eyes were glowing and it was fucking freaky.” 

She’s pacing now, her already strained voice raising another octave as she continues.

“And then I was trapped.  Like.  Paralyzed or some shit.  And it was terrifying.  Except that it wasn’t?  I don’t know.  There was this weird calm or something.  Like magical anti-anxiety meds.” 

She pauses for a minute, and Nicole starts to interrupt, but then Wynonna is off to the races again.

“And then that _dog_ …”  Her hands move wildly, wringing and pointing and gesturing.  “He started howling at her, and the _thing_ got scared.  _Really_ scared, Nic.  And he kept howling and I still couldn’t move and then…  and then…” she trails off, unsure of how to even describe what happened next.

“And then?” Nicole raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“Ummm.  Okay, well…  He was howling and…  and I don’t know, it went all _Exorcist_ or some shit, and like…  there was black stuff oozing out her eyes and mouth and then he growled at it and howled again and it was floating in the air and it…  like…  exploded…”

“It exploded.”

 _“Poof.”_   Wynonna accompanies her response with a little hand gestures.

“Poof.”

“Why do you keep repeating everything I say like an asshole?”

“So…  you are telling me…  that the _dog_ performed some kind of ritual that worked better than ours, and he _‘poofed’_ the demon thing, and now everything is all better?”

“Yyyyy…es?”

They both turn and look at the dog, who has one of his back legs sticking up in the air while he hunches over and licks himself.

“Sure, Jan,” Nicole deadpans.  “Our new dog is _magic,”_ she mocks, wagging her head and adding in some jazz hands for good measure.

“Dude!” Wynonna whines.  “Quit licking your junk.  You’re making me look bad.”

Nicole scrubs her hand over her face and goes back to rubbing her achy shoulder.

“I’m going back inside, Wynonna.  You should get some rest.”  She folds her arms across her chest.  “And next time you have a fucked up dream…  Don’t try to freak me out with it.  There’s enough _real_ freaky shit going on without adding your imagination to it.”  She turns and starts to trudge toward the door.

“Hold the fuck up, Haught,” Wynonna says, grabbing Nicole’s arm and spinning her back around.  “If I dreamed the whole thing, then how did he get in here?  And how do you explain Wave being unconscious right now?”

“You were sleeping, Wynonna,” Nicole says with a weary sigh.  “The door probably wasn’t latched after I slammed it on my way out and he probably nosed it open to get in out of the cold.”  She reaches out to stroke Waverly’s hair again.  “And we already know that she passes out for like an hour every day.  Why would tonight be any different?”

“So that’s it, then.  You don’t believe me.”

“I…  I believe that _you_ believe it.”  Nicole frowns.  “God knows I wish it were true, too.”  She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand.  “But the dog is not magic and Waverly did not get miraculously healed and things are not all better.  That’s not how things work, Earp.  I’ve spent the last week learning that the hard way.”

Nicole might as well have punched Wynonna in the gut with the way the breath rushes out of her lungs.  She stands there in stunned silence, unable to form even a sarcastic retort. 

Nicole just smiles at her sadly.

“Get some sleep, Wynonna.  You’re gonna need it before she stirs.  It’s always the worst right after she wakes up.”

Without another word, Nicole turns and walks out of the barn, leaving Wynonna alone with her unconscious sister and a dog that is intently watching her every move.  She remains standing there for a moment, completely numb, and then she wipes her nose on the sleeve of her jacket while flipping the lights back off.  She crawls back onto the bed, not even reacting when the dog yawns and drops his head in her lap.

It had happened.  She _knows_ it did.  Nicole is just…  defeated.  She’s been burnt by optimism too many times in the last several days, and now she is afraid to believe that Waverly will be okay.

But Wynonna knows what she experienced.  What she saw.  What she _felt_.

There was no way she had dreamed it.

No way.

… _Right?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long time between updates. I've been juggling many projects lately, and it's difficult to give all of them the amount of time they each deserve. But I have not given up on this fic, nor Haught's History, and will continue to work on both of them as frequently as possible.
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me this far.
> 
> ((Also please note that I intentionally left out the translation for the words from the Blackfoot language for now. The passage Nicole read will come up again later, and the translation will be addressed at that time.))


	3. I Am a Lone Wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: "Lone Wolf" - Hank Williams, Jr.
> 
> PoV: Doc
> 
> ((This chapter takes place during the same time as the events in Chapter 2.))
> 
>  
> 
> Special thanks to The Pirate for volunteering to be a real, actual beta. I don't think she realizes what she just signed up for...

_Things aren’t what they used to be_.

He’s lying in the darkness, snow seeping through his clothes as the numbing cold settles into his aching bones.  His thick skin isn’t what it once was and he’s covered in fresh cuts from brutally honest words, still raw, oozing self-doubt and regret.  The added bitterness of recent rejection exacerbates them like salt poured on an open wound.

And still he can’t stop the thought from bouncing around his skull.

 _Things aren’t what they used to be_.

He thinks it while he squints through the lenses that turn everything green.  He thinks it while he feels the bulge in his pocket pressing against his ribs.  He thinks it while the engines rumble and the wheels turn.

 _Things aren’t what they used to be_.

Back in his day, stealing a prize stud from a well-guarded ranch was an entirely different business. 

It started with a scout.  An eagle-eyed tracker whose step was both silent and invisible.  Who carefully timed his reconnaissance around the cycles of the moon, providing the best opportunity to memorize the layout and the patrols and the traps while still under the cover of relative darkness.

But there’s no need for a full moon tonight as Doc lies on his stomach, peering over the ridge with a set of strange goggles that he’d found in the BBD safe strapped to his head.  There’s no need for any moon at all.  Because it is pitch black on this moonless winter night, and yet he can see everything happening in the valley below as clear as day, albeit in an eerie shade of green.

He pushes the goggles up from his eyes and blinks a few times into the darkness, unable to see _anything_.  Not even his own hand right in front of his face.  Yet when he pulls them back down, there it all is again.  The fencing that runs along the perimeter.  Outlines of the buildings that make up the compound.  Little green men milling about with folders and boxes and fancy guns. 

Doc has always had an aversion to the _hoodoo voodoo_ , and right now he feels like he’s been given a glimpse into the shadow realm.

He doesn’t like it.

Not one bit.

 _But things aren’t what they used to be_.

That’s painfully obvious in the way he has to shift his body carefully to keep the grenade from digging into his side.  When he and the boys used to get drunk and go out wrangling horses, sticks of dynamite had served a dual purpose:  creating a distraction and destroying the fencing so they could get the horses out.

But even that has gone by the wayside now.  Someone took that same punch and wrapped it up in a sleek little package.  No need for matches.  No need for fuses.  No need for stabilizers to keep it from blowing up in your face.  Just a plastic polymer pinecone with a pin that you simply pull and throw.  Doc had seen it in action just a handful of days ago when Wynonna had rigged her gun to ambush Bobo.

He’s Doc _freaking_ Holliday.  Nothing impresses him anymore.

Except maybe _that_.

Still, there’s something to be said for the skill that goes into making a well-crafted stick of dynamite.  Finding the perfect ratio of 75% potassium nitrate to 15% softwood charcoal to 10% sulfur.  Doc had even made his own saltpeter, a much stronger blend than the typically low grade that was available on the market.

And while not needing a match might be convenient, unintentionally pulling a pin when you don’t mean to is awfully easy.  It’s certainly much more difficult to accidentally produce an open flame out of nowhere.  Fuses might also be a hassle sometimes, but Doc preferred the precision timing that they offered over these newfangled methods.  With a properly constructed fuse of white gauze wrapped around black tar, you got exactly three seconds of burn time per inch.  A man could calculate the exact time of detonation down to the second.  Unlike this miniature bomb in his pocket where you count to three and _hope_ it’s enough time.

 _But things aren’t what they used to be_.

In days past, the things they most had to watch out for were cowboys on patrol around the pastures and the stables.  Tired, underpaid men that were half asleep on their horses, lazily wandering the same paths night after night.  If their timing was right, he and the boys could go an entire night without even seeing one of them.

But gone are the horses and their riders, replaced by enormous black vehicles with bulletproof glass instead of saddles and high-beam LED headlights instead of candlelit lanterns.  The drivers wear body armor instead of bandanas, alert and trained and changing up their patrol routes so that a potential intruder can’t predict them.

And Doc Holliday may be able to hit a dime at thirty paces, but even he is no match for those high-powered rifles with the scopes that sweep the area every so often.

 _Things aren’t what they used to be_.

Doc laughs at the irony of his situation. 

Being a horse thief carried a death sentence back in his day.  Got you hanged in the center of town while the townsfolk sat with their picnic baskets, trading stories and watching their children play in the streets like it was some kind of church social.

If he gets caught doing this now, he wonders if he’ll even make it long enough to be hanged for treason, or if he’ll just be executed right here.  No trial or a chance for last words or even a dying man’s cigarette. 

Just a bullet to the head. 

Quick and dirty.

The thought is enough to make him want to turn around and sneak back out the way he came in.  Doc Holliday doesn’t put his neck on the line for a self-righteous dick with a rod up his ass and something inside him that lets him toss Big Steve through a window. 

But then he remembers why he’s really here, and he curses into the night.

 _Because things aren’t what they used to be_.

He had loved Wyatt Earp.  Like a brother.  Like more than a brother.  He had _loved_ him.  When Wyatt abandoned him after he made his deal with Constance Clootie, Doc’s heart had broken for more reasons than one.  He had many flings and one-night stands and days upon days in a row spent at the brothels after that before he found himself at the bottom of a well.  But he had never let anyone in again the way he’d let Wyatt in.

Not until now.

He’d scoffed at Waverly when she called him out for loving Wynonna after they’d been attacked by the Stone Witch.  She’d accused him of lying about it, and she was more correct than she could have known.  He _had_ been lying.  Lying to _himself_.  He loved her and he didn’t know how to handle it, so he’d lied to himself and insisted it wasn’t real.  And when the truth of it caught up to him, he’d fled town.  A far better solution than being rejected by another Earp.

_“The difference is, she adores you back.”_

And it was the truth.  Doc had seen it in Nicole’s face when they had been restraining Waverly – not _Waverly_ – in the barn.  When she had punched him in the face.  When she had been running herself ragged while poring over Waverly’s books trying to find something – _anything_ – to save the woman she loves.

The problem is, he’d seen the same look on Wynonna’s face right before she had kissed Deputy Marshal Dolls at the party.  When she had realized he’d been shot during the skirmish at Shorty’s.  When he was being carted off in the back of a military transport truck, handcuffed and charged with treason.

 _She adores you back_.

He hadn’t stuck around much longer after they’d gotten the rigging secured in the barn.  Tensions were high and the _thing_ inside Waverly wasn’t the only one that had intent to wound with every word spoken.  He cares deeply for Waverly, but the bond she shares with both Wynonna and Nicole is different, and he felt like he was just getting in the way and making things worse.

Wynonna might not return his feelings, but watching her in agony over what was happening to her sister was killing Doc more painfully than the consumption had ever hoped to.  He may not have been able to do anything to help Waverly, but he knew there was one thing he _could_ do for Wynonna.

Doc Holliday has never done a thing in his life without a guarantee that he’d be getting something back in return.  But here he is, crawling along on his belly in the ice and snow after raiding the safe in the BBD office again, risking his life to rescue someone that may be more monster than man simply because Wynonna adores him back.

 _Things certainly aren’t what they used to be_.

Although once again, he’s getting tugged around by the heart at the hands of an Earp.

 _Things aren’t what they used to be.  But maybe some things are_.

 

* * *

 

“You’ve got the most important job of all, princess.”

He doesn’t say it softly, the rasp in his voice as sharp as the icy wind, but the words are swallowed up by the darkness, just the same.  The thick blanket of fresh snow mutes the world, absorbing the sounds of the night, leaving behind an unsettling calm and eerie quiet.

She huffs in response, her breath visible in the air, faint white tendrils curling around his hand as she pushes her nose further into it.  He strokes it gently, marveling at the trust already in place after their short time together. 

It’s a far cry from the last ride he had endured.  Clunky.  Stubborn.  Temperamental.  Flashy and pink, with a mind of its own.  He hadn’t trusted it for a second.  A man simply cannot form a connection with metal and gears and an engine that rumbles and roars.

And he’d been right not to.  The beast had betrayed him the second he had tried to cross the boundary. 

It turns out he’d gotten the last laugh in the end, though, courtesy of Big Bubba.  Bound and gagged in the back of his truck, the last thing Doc had seen before falling unconscious again was Stone Cold engulfed in flames, the paint bubbling and hissing and melting away from the metal like skin being stripped from bone, leaving behind the skeleton of his fallen steed.

But this mare – the one he had _borrowed_ from Wilson’s farm on his way into town to raid the gun safe again – well…  she is an entirely different story altogether.  He knows how to handle her and she knows how to let him.  It’s a special kind of bond, and even though it was forged quickly, it still runs deep.  She can read him like he reads a wanted poster and he trusts her instincts like his own.   They may not really know each other, but they do know how to take care of one another.

It’s flesh and blood and intelligence versus steel and oil and electronics.

Sorry, Pinky.  But Doc will choose this kind of horsepower every time.

The mare bumps her head into his shoulder, pulling him out of his thoughts as he stumbles backward a step, snow crunching under his boots.

“What’s the matter, girl? Not a princess?”  She nickers and he runs the flat of his hand up between her eyes, rubbing gently.  “You should be,” he coos.

She’d been a little spooked when he’d first returned from the ridge overlooking the old factory that’s been taken over by Black Badge, and he’s glad they’re past that now.  Apparently the strange goggles he’d had strapped to his face had alarmed her and he hadn’t hesitated in removing them. 

To be honest, he’d been a bit spooked himself.  It was one thing to see what was going on with the guards.  But it was another thing entirely to see the pale green outline of a horse with fiercely glowing eyes right in front of your face.  That’s enough to make any man falter.

At least that was what Doc had told himself.

“About this job,” he says, trailing his hand down her neck and patting her lightly.  “It’s extremely important.”  His fingers are numb from the cold and he fumbles with the buckle on the saddlebag.  When he finally pulls the strap free slides it open, he tugs his hat off of his head and runs his fingers through his hair.  “I need someone to look after my hat.  Keep it safe.  And you are the only one I can trust, princess.”

She huffs again, pawing at the ground, and he laughs as he carefully secures his hat in the leather pouch.

“Don’t you worry,” he says, stroking her nose again.  “I will surely return for it soon.”

Making his way around the mare, he digs in the other saddlebag.  Wrapped carefully in one of the spare t-shirts Dolls kept in his office and a couple of his workout towels are four more grenades just like the one Doc has tucked away in the pocket of his overcoat.  If the plan he had begun to formulate is going to work, he’s going to need the extra firepower.

He curses the awkward shapes as he cradles them in the crook of his elbow, once again lamenting the lack of dynamite in his current situation.  You may have to be a bit more careful with how you handle them, but there is no denying that the slender sticks are far more convenient than these misshapen spheres that can’t be stacked or bundled or _trusted_.

There’s a delicate trick to throwing a stick of dynamite _just right_ – shoot from the elbow and, after that, it’s all in the wrist – but Doc has long since mastered that skill.  Turning one of the grenades over in his hand, he notes how deceptively heavy it is.  It easily weighs twice that of a stick of dynamite and he wonders how that will affect his accuracy with it.  Not to mention the odd shape.    

It just feels…  _wrong_.

His mustache twitches as he grumbles and shoves the rest of the grenades in his various pockets, not trusting them enough to let them touch.  Digging in the saddlebag again, he pulls out a spool of baling twine and smirks to himself as he tucks it into his jacket along with the rest of his haul.

Doc Holliday is nothing if not resourceful.

“Alright, princess.”  He pats her neck again.  “You wait right here for me and I shall return with haste.”  She nudges him, and he strokes her a few more times before stepping away.  He pulls the goggles back onto his naked head and he turns crunches through the snow on his way back toward the ridge.  “Time to go and rescue a dead man.”

And hopefully not become one in the process.

 

* * *

 

The blood is warm.

He feels it seeping through his fingers, soaking his clothes, staining the snow beneath him.

The blade comes out slowly, the muscles contracting around it.  Trying to hold it in place.  Trying to keep more blood from spilling.  But the gurgling noise says it’s already too late for that. 

The strike had been precise.  Hit it its mark perfectly.  Plunging deep and fast and relatively painless, at least.  The work of a well-practiced master.

His mustache twitches.

He _is_ Doc _freaking_ Holliday, after all.

Wiping the blade off on his pant leg, Doc slides his Bowie knife back into the leather sheath on his belt and sets about dragging the body of the guard closer to the fence.  The man is practically a gorilla and he grunts with the exertion of pulling the dead weight, but after a few minutes they are behind the snowdrift Doc had hollowed out as a hiding place where he had lain in wait.

He slips his overcoat off of his shoulders and uses it to sweep fresh snow over the blood trail they left behind and then lays it out next to the dead mercenary.  He finds himself wondering again how he ended up in this position, stripping down to his skivvies in the dead of winter, hidden away behind a snowbank in a pitch black corner of a secret government facility.

The things he does for the unrequited love of an Earp.

Rolling the guard over, he starts pulling off his military grade BDUs, a tightness settling in his chest when his hands come away bloody again.  He tries to focus on the fact that the uniforms are all black, grateful that the red stains won’t give him away, but all he can think about is sitting on a blanket under the old oak tree with the pretty school teacher.

Sally had laughed like a mule when he used his charm, but her eyes did shine and Doc had been sweet on her.  They hadn’t had long together before she had been taken by the fiend himself, Jack of Knives, but Doc had spent many a Saturday afternoon on lazy picnics, wooing her before returning to his shadier nighttime activities.

Her favorite thing to do during their quiet time together was read to him.  The stories weren’t really his type – no gunslingers or bank robbers or stagecoach chases – but she had let him lie with his head in her lap and she’d stroked his hair while he listened to her voice and he hadn’t really minded the fancy words _too_ much.

Sometimes it was just poems that he didn’t really understand, though by the look on her face when she read them, he had a pretty good guess what they were about.  But other times it would be a story.  A play, she had told him, like the ones put on by the traveling theatre troupes.  One in particular sticks in his mind right now, its hooks buried deep, pulling at his conscience.

Doc Holliday has always been a man of morally grey character.  Even standing alongside Wyatt and his noble crusade, he could still be bought for the right price.  August Hamilton and his time spent chained at the bottom of Big Deep Lake was proof of that.  There’s a reason he is the man on this mission.  A reason he didn’t bring anyone else for backup.  He’s the only man that can do what needs to be done.

And yet.

His time with Wynonna has changed him.  His time with Waverly.  With Nicole.  Hell… even the time he spent working with Dolls to rescue Wynonna from Jack and to brave the saloon full of Revenants to find an antidote that might have saved the entire town.

He’s not quite the same man he used to be.

Because he’d had no qualms whatsoever about hurling his knife at the unsuspecting Black Badge guard, burying it in his throat so he couldn’t call out, but as he stands here now slipping into the dead man’s clothing, all he can see in the darkness beyond the eerie green glow of his goggles is the look on Wynonna’s face if she had been here to see what he’d just done.  The disappointment and disgust that would cloud her normally crystal blue eyes.  The same look Wyatt had gotten right before he’d broken their bond and left him behind after discovering his deal with the Stone Witch.

And all he can think about is the woman in one of Sally’s stories that kept seeing the blood on her hands until it had driven her mad.

He stares at his own hands for a while longer and then finally shakes his head and remembers where he is and what he’s doing.  There’s no time for guilt now.  It will have to wait.  Until Dolls is safe.  Until he know Wynonna will be alright.  Until he has liquor to help it go down.  Then he can let the whiskey burn as he drinks it away.  Burn right through him until he can’t see the blood anymore.

Balling up his discarded clothes, he shoves them into the pack the mercenary had been wearing on his back, and after carefully removing the grenades from the pockets of his coat, he crams it in there, as well.  The grenades fit nicely into the pouches on his newly acquired tactical vest and after he makes sure the combat boots are laced tightly, he finishes off his disguise by yanking the black mask down over his face. 

It feels strange, only having his eyes exposed.  His mustache bristles against fabric and it’s all he can do not to sneeze because of it.  Breathing through the material of the mask reminds him of the laboring breaths he had once taken before the Stone Witch had healed his diseased lungs, and a moment of panic sets in before he can get a grip on himself again.

With his Bowie knife strapped to his thigh and his twin Colt Lightning six-shooters tucked into his new belt, Doc pulls the shadow realm goggles down over his masked face.  He kicks down the snowbank he’s been hiding behind and buries the dead guard with it, leaving behind no trace of his treachery. 

He’s running out of time to find Dolls, but there’s another matter that has suddenly taken precedence, and it has everything to do with what he’s just found in the pocket of his new pants.  He sets off back in the direction from which the guard had come on his patrol, his numb fingers wrapped around what may turn out to be their salvation.

The keys jingle in his hand as he runs off into the darkness.

 

* * *

 

Maybe he was wrong.

He hates to admit it.  He _is_ a proud man, if he’s being honest.  Sometimes his wounded pride is his own worst enemy.  He’d learned that the hard way after pushing Wynonna away.  Pushing her away and, as it turns out, right into the arms of another man.

But as he carefully slides each grenade into the tailpipes of the black SUVs parked in the bank of vehicles on one side of an old warehouse attached to the abandoned factory, he decides that maybe he was wrong.  Maybe these miniature pinecone bombs _do_ have some use, after all.

He unspools the baling twine a bit further, cutting it off with his Bowie knife when he reaches the vehicle he had determined belonged to the keys in his pocket, making sure there is enough slack to let it droop low, the majority of it disappearing into the snow.  He makes a loop in the end of it and drapes it over the passenger’s side mirror, grinning to himself beneath his mask.

At least they’ll be going out with a bang, one way or another.

Reluctantly, Doc tugs the magic goggles off of his head.  They may make him more than a little uneasy, but he has to admit that he’s grown used to enhanced vision they’ve afforded him thus far.  Unfortunately, their precarious relationship must come to an end.  He’s in the belly of the beast now, ready to fall into line with the rest of the mercenaries milling about, and he can’t risk anything that will make him stick out any worse than the fact that his BDUs fit him about as well as his papa’s uniform had when he and his brother, Francisco, had run around in the backyard playing soldiers.

Adjusting his woolen mask again, paranoid that they’d be able to see through it – see through _him_ – he takes a few deep breaths and steps around the end of the building, joining a group of others as they make their way across the compound toward a large set of hangar doors.

He narrows his eyes as he scans the area around him.  Something is going on.  Something has the whole lot of them keyed up and agitated and on edge.  Large transport trucks similar to the one he’d seen Dolls getting hauled away in are being loaded up with metal boxes and wooden crates and large containers marked as munitions.  Scientists in lab coats are standing with clipboards, shouting and pointing and directing burly men carrying cages with their contents hidden beneath thick coverings.

 _They’re packing up_.

Doc doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but the one thing he _is_ sure of is that it means he’s running out of time.

He follows the group of guards through the doors, and when they continue through the main loading bay, he breaks off down one of the side corridors leading into the bowels of the repurposed factory.  He has no idea where to even start looking for Dolls, but he figures it has to be someplace out of the way, not right in the middle of the high traffic areas.

With his hand never far from the gun tucked into his belt, Doc slinks down hallway after hallway, thinking he might be willing to make another deal with a demon for a map or posted signage or a goddamn label on a door.  He’s lost count of many turns he’s taken at this point, and the only thing he’s getting closer to is his deadline.

When he steps around the next corner, he freezes.

Standing directly in front of him is an elephant of a man, wearing matching BDUs and mask.  They stare at each other for a long moment and Doc can hear his heartbeats echoing off of the sterile walls.  His hand flexes, his palm sweaty, and he feels his pulse in his fingertips where they itch to draw.  To aim.  To _fire_.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the man demands gruffly, slightly muffled through the wool of his mask.

Doc’s fingers curl around the polished wooden handle of his revolver.  This is it.  This is where the great Doc Holliday makes his final stand.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you, asshole,” the man says after a few more beats.  He reaches out and punches Doc in the shoulder, causing him to stumble backward under the force of it.  “Where the fuck have you been?”

It takes several seconds for the adrenaline in his veins to allow his brain to catch up.  He’s not busted.  Not yet.  But he will be soon if he doesn’t come up with something quick. 

Unfortunately, he’s still firing on all cylinders at once, and all he can manage is a one-shouldered shrug.  It works, though, by some miracle, and the guard in front of him shifts uncomfortably on his feet.

“After a pot and a half of that sludge they call coffee, I can’t wait any longer.  I gotta _go_ before my ass turns into something outta that fucked up lab.”

Doc wrinkles his nose at the crudeness of the statement, but gives a sympathetic nod in return.  That’s all it takes, and the man rushes past him, desperate.

“I knew you’d cover for me, buddy,” he says as he’s disappearing around the corner.  “Just don’t tell Lucado.  That bitch’ll eat my balls for breakfast.”

And then he’s gone.  Leaving Doc with a presumably clear path to the _fucked up lab_.  He hopes that means what he thinks it means.

“Well, I’ll be.  That was certainly fortuitous,” he mutters as he continues down the hall.

It doesn’t take long before he reaches a large metal door with thick panes of glass covering the majority of the upper portion.  Through the windows he can make out rows of cages stacked on work tables and an entire wall covered with glass cubicles fitted with doors similar to the one he’s standing in front of right now.

He tries the handle, but nothing happens.  He slams his shoulder into it, but it doesn’t budge an inch, instead throwing him backward several steps.  He curses as he rubs at the place where there will surely be a bruise, and something catches his eye. 

On the door next to the wall is a small metal box.  No keyhole.  No number pad like the safe in Dolls’s office.  Just a grey box with a plastic panel on the front and a little red light glowing at the top of it.

Doc reaches out and pushes on the front of it.

Nothing happens.

He touches the light.

Nothing happens.

He puts his thumb on it like he’d seen Dolls do with the little box where he kept his favorite gun in the BDD office at the Sheriff’s Department.

Nothing happens.

 _“Thunderation,”_ he hisses through clenched teeth as he slaps his palm against it roughly out of frustration.

Nothing happens.

If Wynonna were with him, she’d know what to do. 

He’s a smart man.  He can read a person like an open book and see right through their bullshit sometimes before they can even see through it themselves.

But he’s useless right now and he’s going to fail her and she’ll never forgive him.

He wishes Nicole was here. 

She’s patient with him.  She shows him how to get the hot box in the kitchen to warm up his food.  She shows him how to punch the numbers on the telephony at the station when they’re collecting Waverly’s books so that he can call Wynonna and ask her if she wants something to eat, even when he knows the answer will be no.  She shows him how to use the flasher to take pictures of the pages in the research books so they can line them all up next to each other on the board, a far cry from the contraption Levi had used to take portraits in the streets.

If Nicole were here, she would show him how to work the door and he wouldn’t be _this close_ to his goal, but left standing out in the cold.

He tries touching the plastic panel again.  Still nothing happens, but as he pulls his fingers away, he feels something rough and raised beneath them.  Leaning in close, he squints at the panel and sees a small maple leaf and the letters _CDN_.

He’s seen that before.

 _Where_ has he seen that before?

Pacing back and forth in front of the door, knowing that elephant man could return at any minute, Doc wracks his brain trying to remember where he’s seen that logo.  He wrings his hands and he rubs his temples and folds his arms across his chest.

And that’s when he feels it.

The little plastic keycard clipped to one of the pockets of his tactical vest.  It brushes against his fingers where his arms are crossed and he actually _jumps_ like he’s just been burned.  He yanks the white rectangle off of his vest and holds it up.

There they are.

Across the bottom of the piece of plastic, a maple leaf and the letters CDN are printed in dark blue.

With trembling fingers, he holds the card out, waving it in front of the grey box.

Nothing happens.

He touches the edge of the card to the plastic panel.

The red light flashes briefly.

 _Yes_.

Okay.  He can figure this out.  He taps the card against it.

The red light flashes briefly.

He holds the card flush against it.

The red light flashes again, more rapidly this time.

He looks down at the way he’s holding it, and turns it around until the logos line up with each other.  Then he presses it hard against the grey panel again.

The light turns green and the door slides open.

“I’m your huckleberry!” he crows and steps into the room, flinching as the door hisses shut behind him again. 

The air in the lab is heavy and humid and Doc has to pull his mask off in order to draw a lungful of air, fighting the feeling like he’s drowning on dry land.  The creatures in the cages – some of them might have been animals once, but he is 100% they are no longer – react to his presence in the worst possible way, screeching and chattering and rattling the metal bars.

He runs a hand through his damp hair, pushing it out of his face as he begins moving through the maze of tables toward the glass rooms on the back wall.  If Dolls is in here, that’s the only place large enough to hold him.

He makes it about halfway across the room before he hears a sharp click behind him.  The way it echoes through the enclosed chamber, it might as well have been a gunshot with a bullet ricocheting off the walls.

The voice that follows is high and strained and Doc thinks of Wynonna as he closes his eyes.

“Doc Holliday.  You shouldn’t be here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the long waits as I manage all of my current projects. I just wanted to say that I have not given up on any of my fics, and will continue to work on all of them as my time allows.
> 
> Thank you for sticking around this long, and I hope you'll continue to do so.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone for reading. I am always up for questions and discussions.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr @iamthegaysmurf


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